16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  “Could that be Frederick?” Otto said.

  “Maybe,” Dieter mumbled. “I guess so.”

  The camera focuses mainly on Dieter and Otto as well as the panoramic views of rolling sand dunes that stretch eastwards as far as the eye can see. To the west, over the little town of Lüderitz nestled against the black rock below the picnickers, lies the sparkling Atlantic Ocean.

  “I’d say Ingrid is about to get married and leave Lüderitz. How much is left?” Dieter asked.

  Otto glanced at the rapidly turning front reel, which had only an inch of film left to project. “About three minutes.”

  Dieter met Otto’s eyes and shrugged, a look of disappointment across his face. “There’s nothing much on this reel. Nice memories, that’s all.”

  “Thank God for that,” Otto replied.

  The image jumps to a four–prop Vickers Viscount rushing down the runway and becoming airborne, silver aluminium underbelly with white livery on top, BOAC visible on the fuselage. The camera pans around the airport terminal to a table beside a window where Mother is sitting next to Dieter and smoking a cigarette. Otto, looking playful, walks up to the camera and takes it. The image jerks all over the place and then Father can be seen walking over to the table and sitting next to Mother. He is wearing his homberg, his hair grey and his face strained in sincerity. Dieter waves at the camera and holds up his ticket with a proud smile. Lufthansa.

  “1959,” Dieter said, lifting his feet up onto the coffee table. “I was off to Cologne to study.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Windhoek, probably.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember the long drive.”

  Dieter is now hugging Mother, who is tearful and repeatedly wipes her eyes; then he embraces Otto for several moments, slapping him on the back a few times. They all wave to him as he disappears through departure gate one.

  Otto felt a lump of nostalgia form in his throat. He had missed his brother immensely after he left home to study in Germany, and they had never really spent any meaningful time together again after that. Long distance phone calls and occasional gatherings simply did not fill the void that separation created. Watching that watershed moment unfolding in real time cemented for Otto the inevitability of their subsequent estrangement.

  “Where’s Ingrid?” Otto said, confused.

  “She must have been in New York already. She moved there after she married Frederick, remember.”

  “That’s right – ’58, wasn’t it?”

  “’56, I think,” Dieter said.

  Otto felt a sudden stab of empathy for Ingrid. There was not a frame of film footage from her wedding. Father had filmed Dieter playing football, Otto and Dieter playing on the sand dunes, Dieter leaving for university. But Ingrid had simply disappeared from the family movies, just as Inez had. Father’s own brand of censorship, perhaps, he wondered.

  A splodgy splice introduces a view of the Adermann house with a significant camelthorn tree growing in the back garden. Otto emerges from the kitchen door, running his hands through his side–parted hair, and walks briskly past the camelthorn. He looks excited as he descends the twenty–three steps to the sandy roadway below the house. The camera zooms in, creating an aerial view of Otto and a shiny Morris Minor 1000 draped in a white sash ribbon. Mother is waiting for him beside the car, they hug and Otto walks around the Morris, running his hand over the curvaceous wheel arches, admiring the metal emblem mounted on the bonnet. Eventually he climbs into the car. The image pans back to the house, the empty garden, and the lonesome camelthorn tree. The screen burns incandescent white.

  “Twenty years ago that was, when I left for Cape Town and medical school,” Otto said, shaking his head in disbelief. He turned the projector off. “The sight of that camelthorn made me feel sick. It’s like going back in a time machine, isn’t it? You want to shout out – hey, there’s a body under that fucking tree.”

  Dieter sat with his cheek pressed against one hand. “That last film doesn’t tell us anything useful, Otto, does it? Nothing we didn’t already know.”

  “No.”

  Dieter stood up and stretched. “Tomorrow I’ll call Frans and ask about Keetmanshoop. You in?”

  “Definitely,” Otto said.

  Otto wanted very badly to call Sabine and hear her voice. It had been a strange day, unsettling and unfulfilling in equal measure, as though he had developed a yearning, a need that had to be met before he could say goodbye to Mother and move on with his life once again.

  No child could expect the day they buried their mother to be easy, Otto thought, but under these circumstances he had not felt that the funeral had received due attention or any emotional sacrifice from him. There was unfinished business hanging in the way, impeding proper mourning, with so many disturbing questions about his childhood still unanswered.

  But when he picked up the receiver to phone his home he realised how late it was in Durham. The boys would be in bed and so, most likely, would Sabine.

  Yet again, replacing the receiver, he felt very alone.

  Twenty–Nine

  On the Sunday morning Frans offered to drive Otto and Dieter to Keetmanshoop once he had been to church with his family. Otto recalled that the Lutheran congregation of Lüderitz was both fervent and close. It was generally considered more desirable to be in church and fall asleep than not to attend at all.

  “Frans is a great guy, isn’t he?” Dieter said as he and Otto sat drinking coffee and eating toast in the kitchen.

  Otto nodded, mindful that Frans was also so much more: the local police chief, the man charged with determining the identity of and circumstances surrounding the child’s body in their back garden, and the man who after agreeing to drive them to Keetmanshoop had said to Otto, “No problem. There is just one thing you two can do for me in return.”

  “I’d better call Ingrid and tell her,” Otto said while chewing his toast and strawberry jam.

  “You think she cares?” Dieter said.

  “I feel I should, after yesterday.”

  But Ingrid was not at the hotel. Otto let the receiver drop down slightly from his face in disappointed acceptance.

  “What?” Dieter asked.

  “She’s not there.”

  “I told you.”

  Frans arrived at 10am, dressed in his Sunday best: a black suit and tie worn with a pressed white shirt. Under all this reverent clothing he was perspiring like a farm animal.

  “It’s a four hour drive so we should get going,” Frans said. “You should bring water.” He loosened his tie and folded his enormous jacket into the cluttered boot.

  “This is really good of you, Frans,” Dieter said as they settled into his Toyota.

  “Ag, it’s no problem. I still have a crime to solve and any possible clues unearthed in Keetmanshoop could help me too,” he said matter–of–factly.

  “A crime?” Dieter said.

  “Ja,” Frans said, as though it was self–evident. “A body buried where it shouldn’t be is against the law.”

  Otto was deep in thought as they drove out of Lüderitz on the B4, past the cemetery, reminding him of all the death that surrounded him. Inez and Mother buried side–by–side in the cemetery; Father’s ashes scattered on Shark Island – for reasons not yet clear – and the body buried right in their back garden almost forty years ago, beneath the camelthorn and the patter of their young feet.

  “Where is Ingrid?” Frans asked, turning to Dieter in the passenger seat and meeting Otto’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

  “She’s leaving today,” Dieter said.

  Frans sighed and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, staring at the road. “I asked her not to leave Lüderitz yet,” he said tersely.

  Otto gazed out through the grimy windows, seeing nothing on either side of the road but sand, dunes and occasional protrusions of black rock. Perilous incursions of sand across the road surface restricted their speed of travel.

  “What is it with you guys and Ingrid?�
�� Frans asked.

  Otto hesitated, hoping Dieter might answer. He didn’t.

  “You know, living so far apart in the world is not easy,” Otto said lamely. “We haven’t been together under the same roof for twenty… thirty years.”

  “But you two seem OK?”

  Otto found Dieter’s eyes staring at him in the mirror and grimaced.

  “Ingrid seems to feel that we got more than our fair share from Mum and Dad, more than she did. Since then we have done well while her marriages have all failed,” Dieter said, pulling a face.

  “She’s been married a few times?” Frans asked, his eyes searching for Otto’s in the rear view mirror.

  “Yeah, about three times. Divorced the last one six months ago apparently,” Otto said.

  Frans shook his head, adjusting his bulky frame behind the fulcrum of the steering wheel. “Something’s bothering her.”

  “I gather she was very close to Inez,” Otto ventured, feeling strange mentioning his lost sister so casually in conversation, a name he had not even known less than a week ago; a life he still did not understand.

  “Ja.” Frans nodded. “Very.”

  “I think maybe Inez’s death affected her more than she lets on,” Otto said.

  Frans met Otto’s eyes in the mirror. “Ja.” Then he turned to Dieter, nudging him on the shoulder. “And you and Ingrid don’t speak?”

  Dieter looked at him. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Dieter shrugged. “She doesn’t like me.”

  Otto cringed and covered his eyes with one hand. Discussing their petty family dynamics with Frans made them seem so trivial and baseless. Despite the biting, divisive reality of family feuds, trying to explain them to strangers inevitably gave the impression of such puerility.

  “And I’m not sure I like her much either,” Dieter added.

  “But she’s your sister,” Frans said incredulously, taking his eyes off the road to peer at Dieter.

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  God, Otto thought, Mother must be turning in her freshly dug grave. He looked out of the window. They were driving through a cutting, surrounded by strata of burnt rock layered upon each other like brown and black sponge cake. Soon it was just sand again. Sand. More sand. Occasionally pirouettes of sand danced whimsically across the road under the spell of a swirling desert breeze.

  “Did you know the Solomons?” Otto said suddenly.

  Frans looked up into the mirror. “I’ve heard of them, vaguely. Keetmanshoop is on the Trans–Namib Railway and the father did a lot of work on the rail networks. But I didn’t know them.”

  “It’s a long way to Keetmanshoop,” Dieter remarked. “Do you know how Inez met this guy?”

  Frans shrugged and pulled a face. “Your pa had a surgery there, didn’t he?”

  Dieter nodded.

  “Maybe it was through that?”

  “Why did Father have a surgery way out there?” Otto said. “I never understood that, nor as a child did I appreciate the distance. I just remember him being away from home a lot.”

  Frans scratched his head. “These little communities out here in the desert are very isolated. Even a place like Lüderitz with only twelve thousand people is isolated. The smaller towns really depend on bigger ones for support.”

  One long sandy stretch through the Tsaukeib Plain was so flat and straight that Otto nodded off several times in the back seat. Monotonous, never–ending desert as far as the eye could see. The road ahead shimmered under the glassy reflection of a heat mirage and Otto understood how people dying of thirst could mistake them for oases in the desert.

  “What would we do if we broke down out here?” Dieter asked.

  “I’ve got a radio,” Frans said, tapping a bulky contraption covered with knobs and dials in the dashboard.

  “And if we didn’t have a police radio?”

  Frans chuckled, his great belly heaving behind the steering wheel. “Pray!”

  Ausweiche provided some visual pleasure as they drove through a canyon between dramatic, arid, rocky outcrops on both sides. The rock appeared to have been charred by the unrelenting sun, parched of every scrap of goodness. Past the little town of Aus they entered a landscape punctuated at intervals by low rocky outcrops with flat tops, like hills that had been sanded down to a smooth surface. Otto was mesmerised by their unearthly beauty.

  “This is what I imagine it looks like on Mars,” Otto said, face pressed against the cool glass of the window. “How does anyone live out here?”

  With every mile that they travelled eastwards the terrain seemed to comprise more rock than sand. Otto awoke at one point, disorientated and struggling with a dry, leathery mouth.

  “These are the famous quiver tree forests,” Frans said, pointing out of the window.

  Enormous quiver trees – reminiscent of cinnamon–coloured broccoli with stunted growths of mustard–coloured succulent leaves sprouting forth – dotted the landscape amidst chocolate brown boulders and dry tufts of bleached grass.

  “A forest of a different kind,” Dieter remarked.

  “In desert terms, this is almost a jungle.” Frans chuckled. “They’re actually aloes. We locals call them kokerboom.”

  “Why quiver tree?” Otto asked, captivated by the unusual appearance of these giants of the desert.

  “The San hollow out the branches to make quivers for their arrows,” Frans replied.

  *

  Keetmanshoop was eventually revealed as a contained, flat and featureless little town. German colonial architectural influence was abundant and the settlement was poignantly bisected by Kaiser Street. They drove straight to the police station.

  “What do you guys want to drink?” Frans asked as he opened his door, which protested at the accumulated dust.

  “Anything cold,” Dieter said.

  Frans heaved his sweat–stained bulk into the flat–roofed brown building and returned ten minutes later with three cans held in one hand by a formidable grasp.

  “Here you go,” he said, settling himself into the seat. “The sergeant says the last of the Solomons moved away many years ago. He thinks they all congregated in Windhoek.”

  Otto felt enormously deflated by this news, especially after that exhausting drive through the most desolate countryside he had ever experienced. Why had they not simply phoned? He knew the answer: he had wanted to see the place for himself.

  “We’ll start at the cemetery.” Frans seemed upbeat as he cracked open his can of Fanta.

  They drove to the edge of town to a very derelict–looking rendered wall, once painted white, now losing chunks of plaster as it struggled to support a pair of dilapidated iron gates. Behind this disrespectful boundary, granite headstones languished in gravelly rows in the desert sunshine. Immersed once again in the heat they crunched their way methodically between the grey monoliths looking for Neil Solomon. They found Dr Carl Hahn, pastor and missionary, Schmidt, Stern, Ahrens, many dating back to the 19th century, but no Solomons. Aloes, cacti and succulents, randomly scattered throughout the desiccated graveyard, looked on in silence.

  “He was third generation,” Frans muttered, turning around to survey the headstones. “There must be a few Solomons here, somewhere.” He planted his hands on his hips.

  “There’s another section through there.” Dieter gesticulated.

  When they reached the smaller walled cemetery attached to the main area by an arched gateway, they stopped. The headstones had a different appearance: taller and more ostentatious. Dieter read aloud. “Horwitz, Marks, Kaye, Rosenstein.”

  “This is the Jewish cemetery,” Otto said, noticing the Hebrew lettering and the Star of David on the headstones. He turned back, thinking it had to be a mistake.

  “Solomon,” Dieter called out.

  Otto froze. “What did you say?”

  All three men stood still, their eyes meeting uncertainly.

  “I see a few Solomons,” Dieter repeated, much softer this time. />
  A memory of Dieter asking him if Sabine was Jewish fluttered into Otto’s mind and he covered his nose and mouth with cupped hands.

  “Jesus!” Otto said.

  Frans stood his ground awkwardly. Then, as if sensing their bewilderment and shock, he turned on his heel and began to walk the rows. “Let’s find him.”

  It did not take long as the Jewish cemetery was relatively small. They gathered in front of Neil Solomon’s imposing black granite memorial erected by his grieving family to commemorate his premature death. Its contrast to Inez’s humble headstone back in Lüderitz could not have been more absolute.

  “Neil Solomon,” Otto read aloud. “23.11.1925–11.9.1948. MHSRIP.” He felt cold suddenly, despite the hot, dry, windless air. “I don’t understand the Hebrew bit.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Dieter said, staring in disbelief at the memorial. “He was Jewish.”

  “I hadn’t realised there were Jewish communities living here,” Otto reflected, quietly.

  “Why?” Frans said. “Because it used to be a German colony: Deutsche–Südwestafrika?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “It is still very German,” Dieter commented.

  Frans just looked at them, hands clasped in front of his pendulous belly.

  “Dad would not have approved of this,” Otto said, walking slowly around the memorial stone, examining it from every angle. “That’s for sure.” The craftsmanship was exquisite, carved finials and scrolls, elaborate sand–blasted lettering and patterns adorning the polished surface. He stopped and met Dieter’s eyes across the lavish memorial in silence.

  “I think you mean he would have been fucking furious,” Dieter said softly.

  Frans cleared his throat. “It certainly makes their suicide more understandable.”