16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  They even tried sliding down the steps once on a flattened cardboard box, but it snagged on something, sending Dieter flying. Mum had flown out of the house in a swirl of anger and concern. That was how Dieter came by the chip on his front tooth, and it was still there, Otto noticed, despite the access to expensive Hong Kong dentistry.

  “Hello brother,” Ingrid said as she reached the top step, eyes fixed on Otto. Plum lipstick, coiffured hair, French manicure, Yves St Laurent perfume and Thierry Mugler boots: she looked as though she had just stepped out for a day’s shopping on Fifth Avenue.

  Otto and Ingrid embraced, after a fashion – she squeezed his elbows, which was their only physical contact, and a pretend peck on each cheek was accompanied by an exaggerated smooching sound.

  “Thanks for coming, Ingrid,” Otto said.

  “You look well. Still the blue–eyed boy of the family,” Ingrid said, gently pinching his cheek between her fingers. “Well, almost.”

  Otto frowned: he had brown eyes while both Ingrid and Dieter had Mother’s blue eyes.

  “Going a bit thin on top, there,” Ingrid noted, examining Otto’s receding hairline as if it contained lice. “Not sure who you get that from.”

  “Hello Ingrid,” Dieter said, hands clasped behind his back.

  Ingrid glanced coldly at Dieter and Otto knew what each must have been thinking: when last had they spoken, let alone met each other face to face? He guessed it could have been around twenty–five years ago, after she moved to New York. The vast time difference between Eastern Standard Time and Hong Kong could be blamed, but only partially. Dieter had told him they didn’t even exchange cards at Christmas, and then there was that business over Newman.

  “Dieter. How are you?” It sounded cold and insincere.

  “Good, thank you. How is… er…?”

  “We’re divorced.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where are your bags?” Otto asked, looking behind Ingrid.

  “At the hotel.”

  “Hotel?”

  “Mmmmh. The Zum Sperrgebiet near the harbour.”

  “Aren’t you staying at the house with us? I’ve made up your old bedroom for you.”

  Ingrid snorted slightly and looked down, shaking her head. “God no, I have no desire to stay here. The hotel is fine.”

  Otto and Dieter exchanged a furtive glance.

  “Would you reconsider, for me?” Otto asked softly. “It would be nice if we were all together at this time. It’s only a few days.”

  “I’d rather stay at the hotel, but thank you. Let’s just remember what we’re here for – to bury Mum. This is not a family reunion.”

  Dieter’s eyes remained downcast, avoiding contact with Ingrid’s as he pretended not to be part of the conversation.

  “There is also a lot to sort out,” Otto said.

  “Like what?” Ingrid said.

  “Well,” Otto began, half–turning and gesticulating towards the cordoned–off hole in the ground, “this, for one thing.”

  Ingrid looked across at the tree’s splayed roots and paled slightly. Perhaps the gravity of police crime scene tape struck a chord somewhere within her.

  “God, it was close to the house,” she said. “You guys used to play there, and dig holes.” This time she glanced across at Dieter, who looked up and nodded his head.

  “It’s pretty eerie, isn’t it?” Otto said.

  “I doubt it will affect us, though. The police will investigate and sort it out,” Ingrid said, turning away.

  Otto moved towards the door. The air was cooling as the fog bank neared the coastline. “Let’s go in and have tea, I’m getting cold.”

  “You can’t be wearing a T–shirt here in this fog,” Ingrid said, fingering the flimsy sleeve of Otto’s T–shirt.

  “It’s a lot warmer than Durham.”

  Ingrid and Dieter hesitated at the door, both waiting for the other to enter. Eventually Ingrid walked ahead.

  “I got a call from the local police, from Frans Laubscher. Remember him?” Otto said.

  “Oh God!” Ingrid muttered.

  “He remembers you, Ingrid,” Otto said, filling the stainless steel kettle at the kitchen sink.

  “Didn’t Frans take you to a school dance?” Dieter blurted out.

  “No. Whatever gave you that idea?” Ingrid was indignant.

  “He remembers you too, Dieter,” Otto added.

  “He had quite a crush on you, Ingrid.” Dieter seemed to be enjoying this.

  “It wasn’t me he had a crush on, let’s get that straight.” Ingrid removed her lavish coat, revealing a designer cream and beige ensemble that just covered her knees. She moved to the white cupboards to search for mugs. “God, I swear this is the same kettle that was here when we lived at home. Look at all this stuff… it’s ancient.”

  “What did Frans want?” Dieter asked, pulling up a kitchen chair at the red melamine–topped table.

  “He wants to talk to all of us, tell us what they know and find out what we can remember,” Otto said.

  “Do we have to?” Ingrid said.

  “It’s a police investigation so I reckon so,” Otto replied.

  Dieter breathed in deeply. “Well I’m only here for one week. I have to get back as it’s year–end in the business, plus I’ve got the merger going on.”

  “Me too. My return is booked for Sunday,” Ingrid said as she arranged cups and clinked teaspoons.

  “That’s too soon, guys. There’s a lot to do. We have to sort out the house contents as well as finalise the funeral, let alone deal with the police,” Otto said.

  “I don’t want anything from this house,” Ingrid said, glancing around. “It’s all so old and… ugh! We may as well junk it all, just get someone in to clear the contents.”

  “Oh come on, Ingrid, it’s not junk!” Otto protested.

  “I might take a few things. There’s the old grandfather clock, the cuckoo clock…” Dieter said, looking towards the living room.

  “You can’t have them both,” Otto objected.

  “You can have the piano. It’s a Bechstein, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I suppose so, but let’s take it one step at a time,” Otto said.

  “I’m just saying that there are some things worth keeping, and certainly some items that I wouldn’t mind having,” Dieter said with a conciliatory gesture.

  “I agree,” Otto said.

  Ingrid shrugged indifferently and pulled a face as she poured the tea. “You guys take what you like from the house. I’m not interested in anything.” Ingrid had a way, not just in her speech but also her body language, of being quite direct, and now she tensed her facial muscles and stiffened her back.

  “What about the stuff in your bedroom?” Otto asked.

  Ingrid clenched her jaw. “There are no warm memories here that I want to cherish.”

  Otto and Dieter looked at each other.

  “Did we grow up in the same family?” Otto said, somewhat flabbergasted.

  “Don’t go there,” Ingrid said icily. She placed a cup in front of each of them. “You can do your own milk and sugar, if you take any.”

  They all sat around the table in a silence invaded by the sound of teaspoons on porcelain, and the grandfather clock as it rasped and clicked in preparedness for two loud chimes.

  “I have a vague memory of all three of us sitting around this table one night with a candle, pulling hairs out of a hairbrush and frizzling them in the flickering flame while we chatted. Well, I suppose mostly you two chatted, I was quite young I think. Do you remember that?” Otto said with childlike enthusiasm.

  “God, Otto, you’re fourteen years younger than me and, what, seven years younger than him?” Ingrid said, inclining her head towards Dieter.

  “Six,” Otto said.

  “How do you remember such trivial stuff?” Ingrid furrowed her brow.

  “I don’t know, but I recall sitting with you two, perhaps because you were so much older than me and you had… in
cluded me.”

  Both Dieter and Ingrid shook their heads.

  “What else do you remember?” Ingrid asked.

  Otto thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Nothing much.”

  “When is the funeral going to be?” Dieter asked.

  “Mum’s body has already been released to a funeral home and they need two to three days to prepare,” Otto said.

  “We’ll have to put a notice in the local paper and contact her friends. Does anyone know who they are?” Dieter said.

  Otto nodded and shrugged. “Some. She used to talk about them. But it’s such a small place I’m sure everyone knows already.”

  “Will she be buried next to Dad?” Ingrid asked.

  Dieter and Otto exchanged a glance, Dieter raising one eyebrow.

  “Dad chose to be cremated,” Otto said.

  “Did he? Oh.” Ingrid sipped her tea.

  There was a loud knock on the stained glass front door. The outline of a large figure was visible through the colonial Teutonic–style lead panes. They all looked at each other.

  Six

  Dressed in a pale blue, short–sleeved shirt that was strained to breaking point across a substantial belly, the imposing figure of Frans Laubscher filled the entrance hall. Apart from a dark moustache he had lost most of his hair, except for a grey strip above each ‘cauliflower ear’, a vestige Otto recalled from his years as a prop in the school rugby team.

  “Hello! Hello, you guys. Welcome back to Lüderitz,” he said in a booming voice, shaking first Otto’s and then Dieter’s hand with great exuberance. He smelled overpoweringly of cigarette smoke.

  Ingrid, sitting alone at the kitchen table, looked on, deadpan. The moment Frans stepped into the kitchen her facial expression blossomed into a broad, insincere smile, and she stood up.

  “Ingrid!” Frans said, grinning broadly. “You look amazing!”

  “Thank you, Frans. You look… er… well, too,” Ingrid managed, her eyes taking in his broad, sloping shoulders, overweight torso and pendulous belly, solid legs and at least size fourteen black shoes.

  Otto did not remember Frans’ squint being quite so marked, with one eye always at forty–five degrees to the other, constantly flicking back and forth such that one never knew which eye to look at.

  “So, you’re a policeman,” Ingrid said, awkwardly.

  Frans nodded and appeared embarrassed. “Ja, thirty–five years now.”

  “Wasn’t your father a policeman too?” Dieter asked.

  “No, no, he was a security officer at the diamond company, you know, patrolling the Sperrgebiet.”

  “The Sperrgebiet?” Otto said.

  “Ja, the forbidden diamond fields all around Lüderitz,” Frans said. “It’s a restricted area controlled by the diamond company. Heavily patrolled.”

  “Must have been a good job?” Dieter said, gesturing for Frans to enter the kitchen.

  “Oh ja, but I could never work for them, not after what happened, no way.”

  Otto and Dieter looked at each other blankly.

  “Come in, Frans; tell us about yourself,” Dieter said, scraping a chair across the kitchen floor for Frans to sit on.

  Frans wiped his mouth with a meaty hand. “Jees, well, I’ve been a policeman here in Lüderitz since leaving school, with just one assignment in Windhoek and a year in Swakopmund along the way.”

  “And you’re the chief now?” Otto said with a flourish of his hand.

  Frans blushed. “Ja. For the last seven years.” He kept glancing across at Ingrid, who managed to avoid his eyes.

  “Congratulations, Frans. You’ve done well,” Dieter said without a hint of disingenuousness.

  “No, not really. I mean, you guys – you’re in Hong Kong, is that right?”

  Dieter nodded.

  “And Otto in England: a doctor like your pa.” Frans nodded effusively as he met Otto’s eyes. “And you live in New York, Ingrid?”

  Ingrid nodded begrudgingly.

  “It must be fantastic living in New York,” Frans said, his deviated eyes dancing, as though he was imaging her world of skyscrapers and city lights.

  Ingrid looked up and pulled a face. “It sure beats Lüderitz.”

  “This is amazing. Here you all are, all the Adermanns together in the house again.” Frans was like a puppy dog with his tail wagging uncontrollably.

  “I am not an Adermann,” Ingrid muttered.

  Frans blushed. “Ja, you’re married, of course.”

  “Divorced,” Ingrid said with a terse grin.

  Frans just looked at her for a moment. “Hey, listen to me, I am so sorry about Mrs Adermann, really, man – my condolences and all that about your ma. It is very sad. She was a wonderful, wonderful lady.”

  “Thank you, Frans,” Dieter said. “Tea?”

  “Ja – er, actually no thanks, I just had one at the station.” Frans was staring at Ingrid again, clearly making her uncomfortable. “I can’t get over how much you remind me of Inez,” he said eventually, rubbing his stubbly jowls with a meaty hand and shaking his head.

  Otto and Dieter exchanged a puzzled look. Ingrid drew a sharp breath as though she had been jabbed in the ribs, and looked away, out of the kitchen window.

  “What can you tell us about this business?” Ingrid said quickly, pointing at the camelthorn tree roots visible through the window.

  Frans shook his head, and for the first time his smile faded as his face adopted a sombre tone. “Hey, man, what a shock that was to your ma. Really, I cannot tell you just how much it has shaken this little community as well. You know, Lüderitz is small and everyone pulls together here.”

  “So, the tree blew down, and then what?” Otto asked, as all of them sat around the table, staring intently at Frans’ restless squint.

  “Well, it was one helluva storm.” He sniffed loudly. “And after the tree blew over the garden boy saw some bones in the bottom of the hole – scared the crap out of him. You know how superstitious they are.” Frans chuckled briefly and then became instantly serious again. “Well, the police came, I was called and we found human remains at the bottom of that hole, right up against the rock.” Frans was shaking his head.

  “Human remains?” Dieter questioned. Ingrid looked stricken, holding onto her mug with both hands, knuckles blanching.

  “Well, just bones, you understand, and not too many either. They must have been there a long time.”

  “How do you know they’re human?” Otto asked.

  “The skull – you can see that easily.” Frans nodded, looking at each one in turn. “Oh ja, definitely.”

  No–one knew where to look, and for a few seconds nobody maintained eye contact. A body in their own back garden: it was something unimaginable, surreal, beyond immediate comprehension.

  “Do you know who it is?” Dieter asked.

  Frans shook his head. “No. There are no missing persons who might fit the description, but obviously enquiries are still… as we say… at an early stage.”

  Ingrid, sitting tight–lipped behind her mug, looked as though she had seen a ghost.

  “How long has the body been buried there?” Otto asked.

  Frans exhaled. “Difficult to be certain, though we might get a better idea from the pathologists in Windhoek where the bones have been sent, but roughly twenty to thirty years, maybe even more.”

  “Jesus!” Dieter muttered. “It was definitely there right through our childhood years then.”

  Frans nodded. “Can you guys not think of something, anything, that might help us?” He looked from one to another around the table, his eyes perhaps lingering on Ingrid’s catatonic stare. “Your parents built this house in late 1946 soon after they settled here. Ingrid, you must have been about eleven or twelve then—”

  “Twelve,” Ingrid said, clearing her throat.

  “You might, perhaps even Dieter might, remember something.”

  Ingrid and Dieter shook their heads, brows furrowed.

  “Can you tell
if it’s a male or female?” Otto asked, unclasping his hands briefly.

  “Or how old the person was?” Dieter added. “I mean, could the body not have been there far longer than thirty years? Maybe an old Herero who died and was buried in the sand?”

  Frans stroked his moustache thoughtfully as he looked at each of them in turn. “Did your ma not tell you guys?”

  Otto glanced at Ingrid, who was staring into her cup. Dieter’s eyes were fixed on Frans’ face.

  “Tell us what?” Otto asked.

  “Jesus, man!” Frans shook his head and wiped his face, nervously. “You don’t know?”

  Ingrid paled further.

  “The body is of a young child,” Frans reluctantly announced.

  Otto slumped back in his chair and covered his mouth with one hand.

  “A very young child,” Frans added.

  “Oh God!” Ingrid said quietly, closing her eyes for a second or two.

  Nobody breathed around the table.

  “It’s probably some Herero kid,” Dieter suggested flippantly. “They’ve lived all over these parts for centuries, long before the German settlers ever came here.”

  Frans fixed Dieter with a look of censure. “Buried wearing leather slippers and holding a teddy bear?”

  Otto’s heart skipped a beat. Ingrid stood up suddenly, scraping her chair loudly on the floor.

  “Excuse me a moment,” she said, walking out of the room.

  Everyone sat in silence. In the background a toilet flushed and then Ingrid re–emerged, looking uncharacteristically fragile.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt, guys. I thought you knew exactly what was going on,” Frans apologised, looking furtively in Ingrid’s direction.

  “It’s not your fault, Frans. It’s just… shocking to hear,” Ingrid said, speaking for the first time in a while.

  Outside the fog had rolled across Lüderitz, reducing visibility and blocking the sun. In the distance a foghorn reverberated intermittently. The atmosphere was thick with the fishy smell of seaweed and kelp.