“Do you want to know what they found with the tree this morning?” Otto asked.
Ingrid looked at him sharply as salty spray from a wave crashing into the rocks sprinkled over them. “I suppose.”
“They cut into the trunk and then counted the rings to establish its age.”
“Frans?”
“There was a tree surgeon there as well.”
“And?”
Otto glanced at Ingrid’s eager face. It was the most interested and animated he had seen her since disturbing her reading at the hotel.
“Forty–two years, give or take a few either way.”
“So, that makes it about 19… 43?” Her face lit up. “Well, that’s OK, we weren’t even in Lüderitz yet.”
“It’s approximate, Ingrid. There are such things as double annular rings in some years, apparently, so the tree could be younger than that.”
They stopped and looked out across the angry waters of the bay, steaming and frothing like a cauldron on the boil.
“What does Frans think?” Ingrid asked.
Otto began to walk slowly with the bay now on his right–hand side, crashing waves sending spray into the air against an arid, rocky backdrop framed by towering sand dunes, creating a surreal scene of contrasts.
“He reckons that it would still fit with the body being buried either before or soon after the tree was planted, because the largest camelthorn roots had grown over the skeleton.” Otto tried to engage Ingrid’s gaze. “Don’t you remember anything, Ingrid? You must have been at least… fourteen or so?”
“Twelve when we arrived in Lüderitz.” She drew her shoulders up momentarily. “Ever tried fitting into a new school in a small, godforsaken place like this, as a pubertal adolescent? I remember exactly how old I was.”
She walked on, hands now pushed into the pockets of her coat, her furry Russian hat being blown by the swirling breeze that threatened to unseat it.
“You must have missed your friends,” Otto sympathised, sensing a crack in the door, the tiniest of opportunities to connect with his sister.
“I didn’t like Hamburg – snobby people at my school. But there was no–one here like me.” She stopped and looked around, sweeping an arm for effect. “Look at this place, trapped in its colonial past still, nearly a hundred years on, like a living museum.”
“I’ve always wondered – why did Mum and Dad come here?” Otto asked.
“God knows. Dad came first and we followed the next year. It took five weeks to get here by boat and I was seasick all the way.” Ingrid turned to Otto and made a face.
Otto, being the youngest and born in Lüderitz, had never felt the schism of being separated from his homeland like the others. He didn’t even know the stories about the great migration. They were never openly spoken about.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, enduring the wind and the spray off the churning sea, Otto said, “There’s something I really must ask you, Ingrid.”
She looked at him, unimpressed. “As long as it’s not about Dad or your brother.”
A seagull swooped dangerously close and they both instinctively took evasive action.
“Who was that baby in the movies last night?”
“Otto, please.”
“Do you know?”
“Did you talk to your brother?”
“Does he know?”
She hesitated. “I don’t think he was old enough to remember.”
“It couldn’t have been me, it was eight to ten years too early.”
Silence as Ingrid’s eyes stared straight ahead.
“It could’ve been Dieter, I reckon, but then there would be four children… too many of us.”
The wind suddenly gusted and both Otto and Ingrid were temporarily unbalanced.
“Why the big secret? What is going on, for God’s sake?”
Otto stopped but Ingrid continued walking on down the rough coastal track, sea battering the rocks to her right and arid, stubborn desert rock heaped up to her left. The image obscurely brought to Otto’s mind an iconic scene from the recent film adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
“Has the baby in the movie got anything to do with the body in the garden, Ingrid?” Otto shouted defiantly into the howling wind, feeling his heart speed up as he spoke, fearing the worst.
She did hear him because she stopped, half–turned and met his eyes assuredly. “No, Otto, nothing at all!”
Otto raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “So you do remember something?”
Ingrid began to walk again.
“We’re going to watch another reel tonight. I will find out what’s going on,” Otto said, raising his voice against the wind and the waves to bridge the growing gap between them. “Let’s do it together, as a family.”
She kept walking.
“Where are you going?” Otto shouted as another arc of spray peppered his face.
Ingrid turned, her face stony, eyes set and unyielding. “I need time to think.”
Otto watched as she walked away, almost mechanically, one foot in front of the other. He shook his head. Hard as he tried, it was very difficult to understand Ingrid. What was it? Was she merely stubborn? Was she frightened? Was she traumatised?
Of one thing he was now certain: she knew something.
Sixteen
Otto unwound about four feet of film leader from the front steel reel mounted on the projector, and began to methodically thread it around the sprockets and rollers along the film channel, pausing once to drink from a tumbler of scotch.
“She won’t come,” Dieter said, drawing the curtains.
The last Otto had seen of Ingrid was as she walked away from him, heading nowhere. That was many hours ago.
“She might,” Otto muttered.
“She’s not interested, Otto; she doesn’t want to be here.”
Otto closed the film gate and wound the excess leader onto the take–up reel. “Ingrid says you probably don’t remember anything from the home movies we watched last night.”
Dieter flopped onto the sofa, tumbler in hand. “I don’t.”
Otto studied his watch. It was eight o’clock. “So you don’t know who the baby was in the film?”
“No,” Dieter said, straight–faced.
“I think Ingrid knows something,” Otto said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I visited her today when you were at the library,” Otto said.
Dieter looked away awkwardly.
“We spoke about a number of things, including the film,” Otto continued.
Dieter sat forward and re–established eye contact with Otto, curiosity etched into his face. “And what did she tell you?”
Otto rubbed his chin and breathed in deeply. “Nothing much, but I sensed that she was constantly measuring up what to tell me, and what not to.”
Dieter swallowed a mouthful of scotch and stared at his hands embracing the tumbler, as though deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” Otto asked.
Dieter seemed to flush slightly. “Nothing.”
“How long should we wait?” Otto asked.
“I’m telling you, she won’t come. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s booked a return flight to New York, the way she flew out of here last night.” He paused. “I think she resents us, Otto.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, like a petulant teenager. “Because we were given opportunities that we embraced and used to the full.”
“Studying abroad?”
Dieter nodded.
“She wanted nothing more than to marry Frederick, despite Dad’s advice. No–one made her,” Otto said.
“I know, but I still think that’s why she resents us. She made her choices and they didn’t work out. You and I have both done well.”
“That’s not our fault.”
“I’m not saying it is. But I think that’s how she sees it. She reckons we were favoured above her, got special treatment.”
Otto
drank more scotch. What Dieter said was true; he could recall the numerous occasions when this subject had flared up and caused an argument. His beloved Morris Minor had been just one such point of envious contention.
“Why did she and Dad have such differences?” Otto asked.
Dieter shrugged thoughtfully. “It goes back a long way, Otto, but I reckon her marriage to Frederick had a lot to do with it. You remember how she reacted when I questioned her hasty divorce to marry Newman.”
Otto was shaking his head. “There’s got to be more to it than that. She’s being very… evasive.”
Dieter stood up and approached Otto at the projector. “More scotch?”
“Thanks.”
Dieter sighed deeply as he poured, appearing to be weighing something up in his mind. He lingered beside Otto.
“Otto, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Otto studied Dieter’s face, sensing the gravity in his voice. An expectant silence hung between the two brothers, neither able to break it, as Dieter seemed to struggle for the right words. Suddenly, there was a loud knock at the front door. Otto’s eyes widened.
“Ingrid?”
Dieter exhaled, deflated, and rubbed his eyes as Otto rushed like an eager puppy to open the front door.
“Have you started?” Ingrid asked Otto.
“No, we were waiting for you. Thanks for coming.”
Ingrid glided into the living room in a black coat and boots. She regarded Dieter for a moment and then seemed to decide that greeting him was inevitable.
“Hello, Dieter.” Her voice could have frozen alcohol.
“Ingrid,” Dieter replied. Eye contact between them was perfunctory.
“Anything before we start? Tea, coffee? Have you eaten?” Otto asked.
Ingrid removed her coat as she walked through the doorway into the kitchen and shook out her long, golden hair. “Actually, I’d love a bourbon tonight.”
“We have scotch, this isn’t New York.” Dieter shook his head.
“Don’t I know it.”
Soon they were all ready in the living room, Otto beside the projector, at the ready.
“Anyone want to say anything before we start?” Otto asked.
Brief silence.
“No, Otto, let’s just watch the film,” Dieter said irritably.
A blurry, square image, heavily lined and scratched, burst forth from the screen as the projector hummed and ticked, pulling twenty–four frames, seven inches, of film through the film gate every second. Otto adjusted the focus.
Two children cartwheel through spreading puddles of murky water in a garden. It appears to be raining, though the film is heavily scratched, jagged lines burning across the image like staccato lightning. The older child, wearing a skirt that clings to her wet skin, is far more proficient than the younger child who keeps veering off course, colliding on several occasions with the older child, legs landing clumsily on the girl’s back.
“Is that you, Ingrid?” Otto asked.
No reply.
The younger child is wearing shorts and both children are barefoot, long strands of wet hair plastered against smiling faces. The grass beneath the puddles appears slippery and several times both children lose their footing and fall into the water, to great displays of mirth and amusement. The younger child keeps glancing at the camera, smiling, revealing a missing front tooth.
The scene jumps to one of the children pulling on a black hosepipe in a makeshift game of tug–of–war, repeatedly losing their grip and landing on their buttocks with a great splash in the puddles of water. This becomes repeated so frequently that it eventually appears contrived.
“Where’s the baby?” Otto said.
A black car bearing the Mercedes–Benz star on the front grille draws up beside the pavement. A man wearing a homberg steps out with another man and a woman. Everyone is smiling effusively and the woman has bulging, protuberant eyes. They pose beside each other, woman in the centre, smiling self–consciously at the camera.
“That looks like Dad,” Dieter said. “Don’t know the other two. Uncle, perhaps? Aunt, friends?”
“She looks like she has a thyroid problem,” Otto said, analysing her physical appearance.
The scene jumps again. The older girl, wearing a summery skirt, is feeding milk out of a teated glass bottle to a lamb standing eagerly beside her, tugging on the rubber teat. The girl appears to be about thirteen or fourteen; confident and assured on camera. The scene cuts to the younger child stepping into a pair of giant wellington boots that reach up well beyond her knees. Bursting with smiles, the child takes huge, stiff–legged steps to lift the boots off the ground. The scene jags violently to the two children standing side by side as the older girl feeds the lamb. The younger child tries to attract the older one’s attention by playfully pulling her hair, but elicits no response.
“God, I hope we never ate that poor thing,” Dieter remarked.
“I think we might have,” Ingrid replied.
Then the younger child comes around the corner of the timber–framed house, chasing after the lamb but struggling to run in the enormous boots, giving even the spring lamb little difficulty in escaping. Up and down the garden they run repeatedly, until suddenly, in the background, a toddler in a nappy crawls into the frame from behind a flowering hydrangea.
“There it is!” Otto said excitedly. “The baby.”
The next shot is of the baby, full–screen, crawling with great concentration towards a bed of flowers. Curiously, the child perambulates with legs fully extended, resembling a dung beetle. As the child reaches the flowerbed one arm crumples and the toddler topples forwards into the flowers, rising somewhat startled a moment later. No tears. Then another view of the baby crawling straight–legged towards the camera at surprisingly high speed, determined to reach out and smudge the camera lens.
“I recall Mum and Dad talking about someone in the family who used to crawl like that, never on hands and knees,” Otto said.
Ingrid and Dieter, perhaps self–consciously, shuffled in their seats.
The baby crawls this way and that around the garden, even ascending steps at the front door before descending them backwards, very cautiously, all with legs out straight. In the background the two older children play with the lamb, one minute feeding it, the next chasing it.
“It was me,” Dieter said. “I crawled like a spider, Mum used to say.”
Otto froze, confused. “So, if that was you, Dieter, then who are the other two? Only one can be Ingrid.”
Dieter and Ingrid glanced across at Otto, their faces partially illuminated by the flickering greyscale reflections off the screen, like Nosferatu in a moment of ghoulish deliberation. Their eyes remained locked on each other’s for a moment, both Dieter and Ingrid appearing frozen by inertia.
The image on the screen changes dramatically to one of tall, inverted J–shaped concrete fence posts with barbed wire strung between them; barren, muddy ground; guard towers rising at intervals like square rooks on a chessboard; simple, dark wooden barracks with tiny windows; uneven stone paving on which soldiers in Wehrmacht helmets and jackboots patrol the perimeter and watch over the camp from their towers with rifles over their shoulders.
The stark depictions on the screen turned everyone’s heads as they stared, transfixed, at the unexpected scenes captured by Father’s Agfa camera, presumably held in his own hands.
“What the hell is this?” Otto said.
A work detachment of men clad in baggy striped clothing and linen hats fills a deep trench close to a tall barbed wire fence. Watched over by armed Wehrmacht soldiers the labourers toil with pickaxes and spades, deepening the trench and heaping what appears to be clay soil above their heads on the verge of the trench. Above them another detachment of men, wearing the same clothes and revealing thin arms and skeletal chests, scoop up the chunks of wet clay in bony hands and place them in steel wagons anchored on a makeshift rail track.
“Jesus!” Dieter exclaimed.
“This looks like a labour camp.”
The camera pans unevenly across the detachment of labourers to the land beside the fence where the Wehrmacht soldiers are beating one of the prisoners, kicking and striking him with the butts of their rifles. Some of the soldiers look stern and angry; others appear to laugh as they smoke cigarettes. A rough splice jars the image, which jumps for several seconds.
Otto hastily depressed the loop restore button until the image stabilised.
A large brick building with two wide ramps rising side by side up to the third floor fills the screen. Rail tracks lead to the base of each ramp and on one side three steel wagons, as seen earlier, stand in wait. The camera pans around revealing a narrow gauge railway track and a wooden slatted goods carriage: Deutsche Reichsbahn Kassel 37723G is painted in white on its side. Panning around further the camera stops on a square metal signpost with white lettering painted on a black background: Neuengamme vereinigen Sachsenhausen.
“Jesus, it is a camp,” Otto blurted incredulously. “Neuengamme – never heard of it.”
“Why the hell was Dad taking this footage though?” Dieter said, staring open–mouthed at the screen. “Was this near Hamburg?”
Ingrid sat with her hands clasped firmly between her knees. Her face, though appearing confused, was a study in concentration.
“How much more is there?” Dieter asked, turning around to look at Otto and the projector.
Otto calculated from the three hundred feet of film remaining on the eight hundred foot capacity feeding reel how much longer the film would run.
“About eight; nine minutes.”
The scene changes suddenly to a large, swift–flowing, reed–lined river, a cityscape comprising tall buildings, spires and gabled roofing visible in the background. The water flows quickly past a timber quayside under construction, with dozens of emaciated men wearing striped prison clothing labouring under the unforgiving gaze of armed Wehrmacht soldiers. A sign on a wooden post reveals the river to be Die Elbe. A detachment of labourers to one side are digging a deep trench, several yards wide and deep, using simple hand tools, standing in sucking mud that has soiled their clothing up to their waists, and in some, beyond.
16mm of Innocence Page 9