White Lies

by Rudolph Bader

  Lisa was dumbstruck by David’s explanations. Almost every day she read in the papers and saw on television how all those terrorists from the Middle East were invading European countries in order to execute more and more terrorist attacks. She thought she knew what terrible dangers came from all those Muslims that were coming here and didn’t want to lead peaceful lives but aimed at the complete destruction of our way of life. And now this! What did he think? Didn’t he read the papers? Didn’t he watch the news on TV? She’d always admired David for being a very clever and educated man. He must be blind.

  “Isn’t such a view very callous and cowardly? You only want to ignore the dangers of terrorism because you want to have your peace and quiet.”

  “Believe me, Lisa, I am much more concerned about the real threats to our civilization than most people, certainly more than most people in this country. Just read the facts, and you’ll find I’m right.”

  “What do you call the real threats then?”

  “Well, this is going to be much more complex than the populist politicians want to make us believe. Let me just mention the most alarming dangers for a safe and peaceful future. They are first of all environmental issues - I mean the destruction of our natural environment, the killing of hundreds of species every year, the effects of global warming, the filling of our oceans with plastic particles - then there’s the irresponsible business practices of several global players, as they hypocritically call themselves - I mean the arms industry selling weapons to criminal governments, but also many players of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, many irresponsible players in the field of genetic engineering, as well as several giants in the international food industry - and last but not least there’s the international financial system that makes sure the rich get richer while the poor get poorer every day. Dollars and shareholder values have replaced our old ethical and moral values in these days of rampant Neo-Liberalism. Do you really think all those dangers should be left to continue, to grow day by day? Business as usual until the world will sink into complete chaos? Terrorism, in comparison, is a relatively minor problem, and it could be solved by massive investments in education world-wide.”

  “Wow, what a speech! Well, I must say...”

  “Sorry, I know most people don’t want to know. So just forget what I said. What’s more important for us now is to get Andrew free.”

  Lisa didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded. David waited a few moments, then he took his leave and the two parted.

  The same evening, he went for a drink at the Dolphin. He was hoping to meet someone he knew, but as it happened, he found himself alone. He missed his good friend Andrew. Looking around the pub, he noticed that there were about a dozen other people. At the other end of the bar, he saw a group of middle-aged men and a woman arguing about what they called “the bad times”. They argued about the NHS, one of them swearing about the inefficiency of the health service and two of the others maintaining that the service itself was a very good idea but it was being run down by all those foreign doctors. The woman tried to get a word in, which was difficult. Eventually she managed to give her opinion. She said it wasn’t the doctors but the managers of the service. There was too much inefficiency and corruption. This caused everyone to talk at the same time, and it was hardly possible for David to catch what they were actually saying.

  He took another sip of his pint and made an effort to shut the group out from his mind. This proved impossible. The group argued at such a volume that one just couldn’t escape their heated discussion.

  “Yeah, I’m telling you guys, it’s all those bloody foreigners. We shouldn’t have let them in.”

  “How right you are. Why can’t we stop them from coming into the country? It’s all because of the EU, everything’s being dictated by those bureaucrats in Brussels. It’s about time we left, I’m telling you.”

  “Yeah, didn’t Cameron say he’d let us vote on it?”

  “Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s about time.”

  “But what then?” the woman threw in. “Even if we leave the EU we can’t throw them out. We’ll have to keep all those Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians. And the Blacks. Particularly the Blacks because they came as refugees.”

  “Oh, come on, we’ll find a way. We just HAVE to get rid of some of them.”

  “Especially the criminals among them,” a bald man in his late forties with thick glasses cried.

  “You can’t do that,” the woman countered. She was the calmest person in the group. She looked quite attractive, David thought. Brown hair with some silvery streaks, nice face, light blue eyes, figure perhaps a bit on the plump side, but quite attractive. He remembered that he was to call Marie-Claire. They were to meet up later. They were planning to go out for dinner later.

  After the call, putting his mobile phone away in his jacket pocket, David listened to the group again. While he’d been on the phone with Marie-Claire, the attractive woman in the group must have argued that the refugees couldn’t be sent out of the country because of the European Convention on Human Rights.

  “If the law doesn’t allow it we’ll just have to change the law. It’s as simple as that,” the bald man shouted.

  David was absolutely horrified. How could anyone with even a trace of decency suggest such a thing! He had to hold back not to step up to the group and tell them how utterly monstrous and incongruous that was. Even to think of such an anachronistic backward step in history should make one’s hair stand on end. Wasn’t the ECHR an achievement for which the civilized peoples of this continent had fought so hard over many decades? The principles of the Convention were absolutely binding and stood far above petty little political whims of the day. If ever a British politician were to suggest such a crime, David feared that this country was really going backwards down the path of history. Where were we? Was this 1914, the eve of the Great War, with its rampant blind nationalism? David found it hard to keep his mouth shut. But what he’d heard made him sad. Very sad.

  He ordered another pint. He was just about to look at his watch to check how long he’d have to wait for Marie-Claire when she entered the pub, smiling at him.

  They kissed. He was still in love with her. Tonight, he was especially aware of her charm, and he liked her perfume.

  After she got her drink, they sat down in those comfortable armchairs at the end of the bar. “So, how was your day?” she asked. “Have you been giving public lectures on political science again?” she teased him.

  He laughed. “That’s just the sort of guy I am, I’m really sorry. If you prefer one of those blind buffs who go on and on about bashing the EU and all the foreigners in our country, you’ve got to get yourself a new fiancé.”

  “Oh, come on, my darling, you’re okay. I only worry about your repeated concern for our democracy. Things will turn out all right in the end, don’t worry.”

  David digested her words for a few moments. He looked around the other people in the pub. Then he said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that a great many people in this country don’t really want democracy because it’s too demanding on the individual, and it doesn’t agree with the basic structure of our society.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you know the saying about a square peg and a round hole, don’t you? It’s the same case with democracy and the feudal structure of our country. In effect, we are still stuck in the Middle Ages. Our history of the past few centuries only managed to cover it up with a thin coat of a superficially democratic fabric. Just look at our legal system, our system of property ownership, or our voting system. They are–”

  “Aren’t we going to have a romantic evening?” she cut him short.

  He agreed, and they left the pub to walk to the restaurant where they had reserved a table for a pleasant dinner à deux, as she liked to point out.

  Two days later, David m
et Andrew’s lawyer. They had arranged to meet at the lawyer’s office in Hyde Gardens. After they got their cups of coffee, brought in by one of the office minions, the lawyer immediately came to the point.

  “As it appears, your friend should be free within the next few days,” he began. “The alleged witness proved to be a fake, a liar. Nobody saw Andrew near Beachy Head on the day in question.”

  “That’s good news indeed,” David sighed. “But tell me: Why did the witness lie in the first place?”

  “It’s quite complicated. Being questioned in more detail, the witness entangled himself in all sorts of contradictions. In the end, it turned out he just needed an alibi himself. His wife had accused him of having another woman, a secret lover. Which he had, in fact. On the evening in question, he was with her, and in order to cover up his infidelity, he jumped at the opportunity that presented itself to him in the form of the call for witnesses published in the local paper, as you might remember.”

  “Do you mean, the man lied about seeing Andrew just to make his wife believe he had been taking a walk near Beachy Head, while he had been in bed with the other woman somewhere else?”

  “Well, we don’t know about being in bed, but he certainly needed that alibi for his own activities.”

  “How did the investigators find out?”

  “The man got so muddled that he broke down: In the end he confessed.”

  “What a stupid liar!”

  “Well, in my line, you come across more liars than you would ever expect. They often think that a small lie won’t hurt anyone. But sometimes even white lies can cause harm.”

  “You can say that again,” David confirmed. “Andrew himself could write a thriller about the lies in his own family.”

  “Oh yes, you’re referring to his grandfather’s role in the war, the story with which Mr Loeffel had been trying to blackmail the family.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Another three days later, the people of Eastbourne could read in the paper that the man originally suspected of murdering a German tourist at Beachy Head was innocent and had to be released. Forensic investigations had shown that the victim had suffered from cancer in its final stage, so the case was declared a suicide. There were only a few hints at a possible blackmail involved, but not enough was known about it. So, the journalists understood the blackmail story as the delusions of a very sick man shortly before his own suicide. The whole case was closed, and that was the end of Wolfgang Loeffel and his connection with Andrew’s family. Andrew and Lisa were relieved, and so was their mother. Their grandfather was too far gone in his dementia to be told. So, the family just celebrated in quiet humility.

  Only Andrew and David celebrated at the pub.

  On the whole, the family returned to their former quiet lives. Everyone was glad to forget what had threatened their peace of mind only a short while ago. Their grandfather involved in war crimes? Impossible. Only Nora and Andrew knew better.

  It was about three weeks later when Andrew and David opened the touchy subject again over their pints at the Dolphin.

  “The question is,” Andrew said, “what we can actually learn from the whole affair. What lessons does it teach us?”

  “I could give you a full-length lecture on this, but I don’t know if you’re the one who needs such lessons. You have read your mother’s diary and you have seen the full extent of your grandfather’s dishonesty. And I believe you’ve also understood some of the reasons behind the whole story, haven’t you?”

  “I hope so. I think that’s something we’ll have to discuss with my whole family. The only question is: Is anyone else going to learn any lessons from this? What about our politicians? What about our society, our country at large? What about Europe, the world?”

  “Come on, keep your hair on,” David tried to calm his friend down. “We can’t save the whole world. But what we can do is speak and act at all times on the basis and in full cognizance of what we have learnt.”

  After such a big resolution, the friends remained silent for a while, sipping their pints, lost in thought.

  * * *

  The news came in the early morning. Andrew was still sleepy, rubbing his eyes and yawning, when the telephone rang.

  “Andrew, listen,” his mother spoke nervously at the other end of the line, “I’ve got some bad news. Your grandfather passed away early this morning. I was with him. The nursing home called me at three, so I went there immediately. When I arrived, he was breathing hard, already half gone. I held his hands and asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He found it hard to speak. The only word I believe he uttered, but I’m not sure, was ‘Anna’. Anyway, he was gone within the hour, his end was peaceful.”

  “Oh, Mum,” Andrew said.

  “Don’t make a big fuss over it, my son. In a way I am relieved he’s gone. His life was difficult, to say the least, and he had a long life. But you know as well as I do that there was also a dark side to his early life. He had to get through the rest of his life - probably nearly three quarters of his life - in full knowledge of his own crimes and his mendacity. Not an easy life, if you ask me.”

  “Even though, Mum, I don’t think we should forget those crimes. They’re a part of our family history.”

  “Probably, yes. But we still don’t know his exact role during the war, do we?”

  “No, we don’t. But does that make a difference? Do we have to know the details? Isn’t it enough that he was an officer of the Waffen-SS and his actions must have been so terrible that he had to change his identity after the war?”

  “You may be right. Nevertheless, though I dismissed all that years ago, it seems to come back now he’s dead. I have discovered I’m curious. Did he really kill people?”

  “Forget the gory details. He must have had blood on his hands, that’s for sure. Anything beyond this certainty is mere curiosity, voyeurism.”

  “Well, if you say so...”

  “Is there anything you want me to do?”

  “Yes, my dear. Would you please tell Lisa? I can’t get up the courage. She’s so emotional, you know.”

  “Of course, I’ll do that. Don’t you worry too much now. As you said earlier, his death is really a relief. But at some point, we’ll have to speak openly within the family. I don’t want to keep any ghosts in the attic. Grandpa’s role in the war should be made known to the whole family, and we should discuss how to cope with it. Don’t you agree?”

  “If you say so, my son...”

  They rang off, and Andrew waited until a bit later in the morning before he called Lisa. He told her the bare facts without referring to their grandfather’s past. He thought it would be better to put some time between his death and what he saw as a family assessment of his life.

  For the time being, Andrew was quite busy coming to a working relationship with the cellist who had answered his advertisement. At last, he could play his music with someone else. He was thrilled at the thought of exploring all the music for cello and piano by the old masters.

  Grandfather’s funeral was a quiet affair. The man who had affected the lives of so many people had to leave this world almost alone. Only his closest family attended. Not much was spoken.

  * * *

  Eastbourne remained the sleepy town it had always been. It was a town that still attracted mainly elderly people. On sunny days, the benches along the seafront were full of old people, many of them in wheelchairs, enjoying the pleasant breeze coming in from the English Channel. Due to the abundance of elderly people in the public space, some locals jokingly dubbed the town “God’s waiting-room”. During the summer months, the old people were counterbalanced by the tens of thousands of foreign students coming to the town to learn English. Eastbourne was one of the major centres of English language teaching for students from all over the world. What Eastbourne did not ha
ve enough was a functioning section of middle-aged people.

  Could that be the reason for the extremely poor quality of the town’s infrastructure? The local roads were similar to the roads in East Germany or Poland before the collapse of Communism, full of potholes, bumpy and often beyond repair.

  Since the 1980s, many businesses and chain stores had left the town. Not only was the local and regional infrastructure too poor, also traffic connections to other important locations in the South East were neglected. The rail service from and to London Victoria was slow and unreliable.

  Andrew was thinking of this decline of a once proud seaside resort. He was waiting for his mother, Nora. They had arranged to meet for a picnic on the slope leading up to Beachy Head, away from the footpath. They wanted to look down towards the sleepy town, enjoy the fine day and have a final discussion about Grandpa. They had agreed that no other members of the family could fully understand how they felt about him and his history, because the others didn’t have their knowledge of the truth.

  When Nora came slowly walking up, panting with the exertion of the steep ascent, Andrew had already spread a large blanket on the grass. He had chosen a really beautiful spot from where they could have a magnificent view over the town and out towards the sea. There were a few clouds in the sky, but otherwise it was a fine day with a pleasant temperature. The wind, which in Eastbourne often reaches unpleasant levels, was just perceptible but quite mild. In fact, it was a perfect day to relax.

  “Phew, I’m really getting old,” Nora breathed as she put down her picnic-basket. “I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable.”

  “I wanted to have a few moments to myself before talking to you.”