16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  Ingrid leaned forward and placed her elbows on the table. “Let me see that,” she said, drawing the newspaper closer to her.

  Water overflowed from Dieter’s filled glass beneath the kitchen tap as he stared over his shoulder at Otto.

  “Read that again,” Dieter said.

  “It’s a fucking birthday party for Adolf Hitler! Tomorrow. On the day of Mum’s funeral.”

  “What kind of people celebrate Hitler’s birthday?” Dieter said.

  “Admirers?” Otto suggested, raising his eyebrows. “But here, in Lüderitz?”

  “We all know this used to be a German colony; that’s probably why Mum and Dad chose to come here in the first place,” Ingrid said.

  “Yeah, but nobody celebrates Hitler’s birthday – not even back in the Fatherland!” Dieter blurted, resuming his seat. “Do they?”

  “Is this a neo–Nazi thing?” Otto said.

  His thoughts wandered to the home movie images they had seen on the screen: the brownshirt march, Neuengamme camp, the starving prisoners, the beatings, the Wehrmacht guards, the dingy barracks, the executions. Then he remembered something and pressed a finger to his lips. “Do you remember what that woman at the paper said to us?”

  Ingrid’s eyes gradually widened. “Something about Mum’s funeral on the 20th April.”

  “Didn’t she say Dad would have been proud?” Otto said.

  “Proud?” Dieter repeated, pulling a face.

  “I’m sure that was the word she used,” Otto said.

  “Hang on a minute,” Dieter said. “What does that mean?”

  “Christ, I have no idea. But have you thought about what we’ve seen on those home movies?”

  Dieter looked down at the finely flecked pattern in the red melamine table and picked at it with his fingernails. “Do you know what the Nazis did to homosexuals?”

  He didn’t have to say like me, Otto knew. In the world dominated by the purist ideologies of Nazism, homosexuals had been exterminated.

  “What do we do about the funeral?” Otto asked.

  Ingrid made a loud sound of exasperation, like a gasp. “Nothing, we do nothing. The funeral cannot be changed, and in any case, this… thing has nothing to do with us.” She raised one hand and gesticulated towards the newspaper in Otto’s grasp.

  “We could talk to Frans about it,” Dieter suggested.

  “What the hell for?” Ingrid barked.

  They sat in stunned silence for a short while, the grandfather clock ticking dutifully in the background, the dependable sound that Otto would forever associate with being at home.

  “There are still two reels of unwatched film,” Otto said.

  Dieter looked up eagerly and nodded, but Ingrid pushed her chair back and stood up.

  “Those films have caused enough misery. I have no desire to be tortured by further images of Inez, or my parents.”

  “Oh come on, Ingrid,” Otto protested. “The secret is out now, where’s the harm?”

  Ingrid rinsed her mug in the kitchen sink and stood staring out of the window at the camelthorn tree. “Schlafende Hunde soll man nicht wecken,” she said without turning.

  Otto, never schooled in Germany, looked to Dieter.

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Dieter said with a flicker of his eyebrows.

  “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” Otto said.

  *

  After Ingrid’s departure Dieter drew the curtains while Otto laced the film leader of reel three through the projector. “This one is marked 1943 onwards,” Otto said. “I wonder if I’ll make an appearance?”

  They stared with nervous anticipation at the screen. In his chest Otto could feel his heart beating faster. For the first time he was not imbued with excitement and expectation; instead he was subdued by apprehension and his fingers trembled as he moved to turn on the projector. He wondered what he might see on the screen, filmed by Father’s hand, revealing irrevocably what Father’s interests were. Could the next thirty minutes indelibly tarnish the family memories that he had held dear for so many years? How would he feel if what he thought he knew about his past turned out to be so inaccurate, so unsound as to constitute nothing better than a fabrication, leaving him adrift in his adult life without foundation?

  Would this change him, or his perception of life and that of his own children growing up around him? His mind flashed to the body of the unidentified young child in the back garden and he steeled himself to an inescapable reality: he had to find out everything he could. There could be no sleeping dogs left undisturbed. Every frame of these home movies needed to be scrutinised, carefully.

  “What you waiting for?” Dieter said, drumming his hands on his thighs.

  Otto drew breath and switched the projector on.

  Twenty

  A streaky panorama reveals the snow–covered rooftops of Hamburg, the predominantly white shades on the screen flecked and lined by dark emulsion scratches. The image jumps a few times and then settles on a group of children at play, throwing snowballs around a life–sized snowman, crudely fashioned with a crooked stick for a nose. The camera pans across to the road showing cars struggling through deep snow, their narrow tyres clogged with great chunks of ice.

  The two girls, Ingrid and Inez, are engaged in a pitched battle against three younger children whose dark scarves are spattered with the remnants of shattered snowballs.

  “Neighbours?” Dieter said.

  Otto shrugged.

  A little boy wearing a coat, woolly hat and boots walks confidently into view and joins the girls, determined to be part of the fun. He bends over to gather snow and as he straightens is struck and flattened by a snowball to the chest. He kicks like an inverted beetle and bursts into tears.

  The image jumps immediately to a busy port where Mother and three children walk along the dockside across a matrix of rail tracks and past coils of heavy rope and chains. The camera pans from a sign – Hamburger Hafen – to crowds dwarfed beside a large cruise ship moored at the dock. The ship is white with a thick dark stripe stretching from bow to stern, above which several decks of cabins are topped with a single row of lifeboats. The image zooms in on Mother, the two girls and the young boy. Then there is a close–up of the ship’s bow with its heavy anchor chain and nameplate – MV Wilhelm Gustloff – followed by the National Socialist Party flag flapping high above the turrets: the swastika.

  “I vaguely remember this,” Dieter said, stabbing his finger at the screen. “I felt so incredibly small beside this huge ship; it was like a wall, a gigantic building, bigger than I’d ever seen.”

  “Amazing that you remember that – I mean, you couldn’t have been very old,” Otto said.

  “Yeah, you’re right I suppose.” Dieter hesitated. “I just recall the sheer enormity of the ship, blocking out the sun.”

  “What was the Wilhelm Gustloff?”

  “It looks like a cruise ship, doesn’t it? But presumably the war was on, so…”

  The day at the Port of Hamburg continues with sausages and sauerkraut at a waterside restaurant and a shaky lopsided image, presumably taken by one of the girls, of Mother and Father standing close together and smiling broadly.

  The projector purred smoothly beside Otto, not quietly, but the sound blended into the background and became an accepted accompaniment to the flickering images flashed up on the screen.

  With a smudge of film cement flashing across the screen the image changes abruptly to one of starkness, few trees despite open grassed areas, neatly mown with precise edges. An extensive single storey building, with rows of tall steel windows standing side by side like sentries, fills the screen. There appears to be no activity at all, despite a thread of smoke curling upwards from a slender rooftop chimney. A painted sign at the door reads Walther–Werke. The next scene is filmed inside – gloomy, despite the vertical windows, revealing grim–faced workers clad in stripy pyjamas, operating machinery: lathes, presses, drills. Running the length of the roof space are broad canvas
pulleys and belts driving heavily–spoked wheels attached to the machinery.

  Armed soldiers walk up and down the rows, mostly with their hands clasped behind their backs, peering at the workers who never make eye contact, baring only their shaven heads and cloth caps. They appear to be making and assembling rifles and pistols. A heavily scratched image of a labourer shaping a piece of wood into a rifle stock seems to capture the camera’s attention for some time, as the gaunt prisoner under scrutiny hastily turns a block of harmless wood into a component of destruction.

  “An armaments factory?” Otto said, glancing in Dieter’s direction.

  “Do you think this is part of Neuengamme?” Dieter said absently.

  The picture changes to show the inside of a massive warehouse, long roof timbers spanning a floor space punctuated only at its centre by a towering, square brick structure. Packed on pallets around this structure are bricks by the thousand. Pyjama–clad labourers, emaciated and bald, push wheelbarrows loaded with bricks across the vast space.

  Then a sudden distant view of men lined up on cobblestones between barracks, barbed wire visible on surrounding fences between inverted J–shaped fence posts, a distant watch tower, soldiers standing around with rifles. The prisoners are once again wearing striped baggy pyjamas, looking unkempt, underfed. One of the Wehrmacht soldiers, wearing a cap, walks up and down in front of the prisoners, gesticulating animatedly, the shine on his jackboots visible through the camera lens. He unholsters a pistol from his belt and walks up to the man on the end of the front row. The soldier points his pistol at the man’s head and suddenly the man falls down in a crumpled heap of oversized clothing as a dark stain spreads across the courtyard.

  “Jesus!” Dieter said, raising his hands to his face.

  Otto felt the sudden urge to urinate, winded, astonished to witness such an event captured on film – a genuine death, an apparent murder. And these were not just any films; these were Father’s home movies. Even though the incident had happened over forty years ago, it felt fresh and shockingly real.

  “Did we just see what I think we saw?” Otto said.

  “He just shot him,” Dieter said, a hand drawn up to his mouth.

  Otto realised he had witnessed a crime.

  The officer walks along the line of prisoners and stops halfway down, points his pistol at a bearded man who grimaces before crumpling forwards to the ground. The camera remains steady, focused, even zooming in slightly. The prisoners on either side of the executed men stand rigid, wide eyes averted fearfully into the distance.

  “Jesus Christ, another one,” Dieter said, quieter this time.

  Otto’s heart jumped and his mouth felt dry. This felt so wrong, so utterly wrong. Why was Father filming this? Where was he that he would even see such atrocities being committed? Father was a doctor. This made no sense.

  “Where was Dad filming this?” Otto said.

  The film jerks to a new scene, four steel doors with handles, the emblem of JA Topf clearly visible, mounted side by side in a brick wall. Men in pyjamas stare at the doors forlornly. They appear exhausted, the light in their sunken eyes extinguished. One opens a door and throws in a few large pieces of chopped wood, revealing a glowing furnace within. Even in black and white the intense heat inside the ovens is evident. Piled high in the corner of the room are pyjamas so dirty that the dark stripes almost blend into each other. Beside them are dozens and dozens of worn boots and shoes.

  “I don’t like this,” Otto said, turning to look at the front reel of film. The reel was at least half–full of film.

  Suddenly the picture switches to a garden, flowers, a tree, and a young boy wearing a shirt with anchors on it. Curiously, he is walking backwards in straight lines, looking over his shoulder, evidently immersed in a game that only he understands. Visible in the background is the familiar family home with the older girls – Inez and Ingrid – sitting on the steps eating what appear to be berries.

  “Why are you walking backwards?” Otto asked.

  Dieter chuckled and shook his head. “God knows. I must have known even then that I wasn’t straight.”

  Otto glanced at his brother. Dieter was becoming increasingly confident and open about his homosexuality, which until a few days ago had been a complete secret to Otto, if not the world, yet now it was the subject of frequent self–deprecatory quips. Otto wondered what it must have been like for his brother, waiting all those years for the right moment to come out and be honest with his family, the opportunity presented by Mum’s stroke.

  Little Dieter walks past the hydrangeas, his mouth puckered in such a way to suggest he is making sounds, perhaps of a car or an airplane. His arms grip an imaginary object, which he grapples with. Then he turns and walks backwards towards the camera, steadily, without stumbling, glancing behind him only occasionally to check on his path.

  Otto began to laugh. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Suddenly the family is in a park, mature trees, benches along gravelled paths, a nearby pond with ducks gliding unthreatened across its smooth surface. A wicker basket lies open, disgorged of its contents beside a rug unfurled on the uncut grass. A woman is spread out on her front, head supported on folded arms and turned to one side, sleeping. A little boy approaches her, curiously, studying her as she lies motionless and unresponsive. He sits down on her lower back and looks implacably at the camera, but the woman does not stir.

  “That must be Mum sleeping,” Otto said.

  “Trying to sleep,” Dieter said with a wry grin.

  The little boy, Dieter, stands up and then almost immediately sits down again, patting Mother on her back, before moving towards her shoulders and peering at her face. He stands up again, walks around her head and then sits down on her shoulders. Still Mother does not stir.

  “Do you think Mum and Dad had been at the schnapps?” Dieter asked. “She’s comatose.”

  Otto chuckled. “You’re a persistent little shit.”

  Not satisfied, Dieter stands up and then straddles his mother’s back, one foot just reaching the grass on either side, facing her head. He appears to look at the camera for advice, unsure how to elicit a response from his mother. The image jags suddenly to the two girls in a wooden paddle boat, ineffectually splashing their oars in the pond water as their boat turns in circles and drifts away from the shore on a gentle breeze. They are both wearing ribbons in their hair and laughing a great deal.

  Otto felt a pang of sadness watching this moment of happiness captured on celluloid for eternity, defying the events that had subsequently shredded this scene of family harmony. He glanced across at the front reel which had about two inches of film left visible beyond the hub.

  A row of prisoners in pyjamas are sitting mournfully on a wooden bench set against a white wall, their heads either bowed forward or fixed in a vacant stare. Thin, bony ankles are visible above dishevelled boots, and in some cases dirty, shoeless feet. A doctor, wearing a white coat over a collared shirt and tie, smiles broadly at the camera. His name badge over the left breast pocket reads Dr Alfred Trzebinski. He bends down over a glass flask marked Arsen 1:1,000 and removes the glass stopper, pouring some of the clear fluid into an enamelled water jug. He addresses a small group of men in white coats gathered around him, turning frequently to face the camera. Pouring from the jug into a small glass beaker he holds this up to the light to check the level.

  The image jumps to a prisoner drinking from the beaker, his unshaven cheeks gaunt, temples hollowed, eyes sunken and devoid of hope. Then another prisoner, then another, all drink without protest from the beaker, passed down the line and refilled each time.

  “Alfred Trzebinski, that name is familiar,” Dieter said thoughtfully. “Why?”

  Otto’s mind raced as he tried to recall the significance of this vaguely familiar name. “What’s Arsen?”

  Dieter turned around and met Otto’s eyes. “Arsenic.”

  “Jesus.” Silence ensued as they watched the harrowing images on the screen:
starving men being given arsenic to drink in a clean, clinically perfect environment. “Is this some kind of experiment?” Otto frowned, the morality of his profession under question.

  For a second Ingrid’s voice echoed in Otto’s mind: let sleeping dogs lie. An ominous feeling began to settle around him, on the very day when he should have been remembering his mother and preparing for her funeral.

  The earth seems to be on fire, every building is burning, giant flames leaping and swirling skywards in a vortex. Windows glow brightly against the surrounding black of brick walls and night. In the background an explosion flashes and the camera shakes, streaks and puffs of light dance macabrely, illuminating an edgy sky. A view down one broken street reveals cars burning and buildings incandescent with flames pirouetting into the sky.

  “Christ, it’s an inferno,” Otto said in horror.

  “The bombing of Hamburg, probably,” Dieter said, staring at the screen with disbelieving eyes.

  People run down streets between leaping flames, tumbling bricks and glowing roof timbers. Fire engines dispense water helplessly against an onslaught that is too great. A body lies on the pavement, contorted, twisted into an inhuman shape, clothes burnt off the naked body except for the leather shoes. A family sits huddled together in an exposed air raid shelter, their faces frozen in an expression of utter surprise, clothes perfectly intact but the roasted skin of their faces and scalps split open by the heat, exposing the blanched white of skull. More of these images fill the screen, both adults and children, in groups and singly, people taking shelter from the flames but extinguished by the intense heat.

  “Jesus, Dieter, this is horrific,” Otto said, covering his nose and mouth with both hands.

  Dieter was unable to look away from the images on the screen. “Hamburg, I seem to recall, was badly bombed by the Allies.” He nodded like a metronome. “It caused a firestorm… absolutely devastating; killed tens of thousands.” He hesitated before turning to Otto. “This must be it.”