“I so badly need to see you,” he said, sitting down on the brown velvet sofa and rubbing his temples with the fingers of his free hand.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
Where should he begin? “Tell me something nice,” Otto said.
“Honey, what is it?”
“How are the boys?” Otto asked.
“They’re just fine. Max is managing so well with his cast, you wouldn’t think he had hurt his arm at all, and Karl is great. They miss you.”
Otto hesitated. “Sabine?” He struggled to find the words. “What do you think the boys will one day think of me being away these past weeks?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Otto shifted position on the sofa, wrestling with something in his mind, like a troublesome pebble in a shoe. “It worries me that Max will always remember my absence during the trauma of his broken arm. What will he and Karl think of me – think of us – when they look back, many years from now?”
Silence. “I don’t understand.”
“You know, what we recall of events in our childhoods is not always the way it actually was. What will Max think of me for not being there? What will both boys remember about us? Will they one day see the things we did in a different light?”
“OK, you’re worrying me now. What’s going on?” Sabine said, sympathetically but firmly.
Otto could not utter the words. It felt as though he was breaking a family confidence, flinging the front door open for the world to see the Adermann secrets.
“I found some old films, Sabine, hidden away, as if they were not meant to be seen.” He hesitated. Silence: just her breathing and the distant sound of the boys’ laughter in the background. “It seems Dad was a Nazi.”
“What?” Sabine said loudly. “Never!”
“I know. Unbelievable.”
“But he was always so nice to me,” Sabine said.
Otto closed his eyes. “You’re a German, Sabine.”
“Yeah, but…” She fumbled.
“I never saw it coming; no suspicions. Like a lightning strike on a clear day,” Otto said softly. He could feel his heart beating behind his ribs.
“You think that’s why he left Germany in 1945 and settled in Lüderitz?” Sabine asked, and then, quietly, “Oh my God.”
“It’s quite possible,” Otto replied, eyes closed, the pieces falling into place.
“Was he a war criminal?” Sabine said in a forcible whisper.
Otto pressed his fingertips into his temples. The word criminal reverberated in his mind with an image of the skeletal remains of a young boy in their back garden. “Uh… the film doesn’t make it look good.” He sighed.
“How did he get away?” she asked.
Otto shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I have no idea. He came out here at least a year ahead of the family, that’s all I know.”
“Oh my God, Otto. Are you alright?”
Otto shrugged like a petulant child, as though Sabine could see him. He felt his eyes filling and glanced about self–consciously in search of Dieter.
“What about Dieter, and Ingrid?” she asked.
“Ingrid’s in Windhoek. She left after the funeral.”
“Why?”
Otto shrugged again but did not reply. “I wish you were here. The recollections of my childhood are falling apart, Sabine. Nothing is what I thought it was.” He swallowed to regain his voice. “It’s a nightmare.”
He reflected on the changes that had been thrust upon him in one week: Inez, Dieter, Father and Ingrid complicit in deceit – and how much more – and then there was Mother…
“Come home, love. You’ve buried your mum. Just leave now and come back home to us… to normality,” Sabine suggested with warmth and sincerity in her voice.
This sounded so appealing to Otto that it hurt. “I can’t Sabine, not yet. We’re waiting for the official outcome of the body in the garden.” He swallowed as he prepared to continue. “Imagine if it turns out our family are involved in that.”
Sabine hesitated for just a second. “Do you want us to fly out to Lüderitz to join you?”
“No!” Otto said quickly. “This is no place for the boys. I just want to get everything wrapped up and come home.” He reflected unexpectedly on Ingrid’s words. “I think Ingrid was right.”
“About what?”
“She said this was not her home anymore.”
“Oh Otto,” Sabine said softly, before adding more sharply, “do you think she knows what’s going on?”
Otto exhaled loudly. “I’m sure she knows more than she’s letting on.” He dabbed at his eyes, feeling his composure failing. “Please tell the boys I really love them and I have missed them every day I’ve been away from home.”
“Oh, darling, they know that.”
“Please tell them anyway… for me. I want them to know they grew up with a loving and caring dad, even when I was away from them.”
“Oh Otto…”
“They must never have doubts about the sort of father that I was.”
*
Otto was emotionally exhausted when, just minutes later, the unwelcome knock came at the front door, as he was beginning to imagine immersing himself in a large scotch. Dieter answered the door.
“Oh hi Frans,” he heard Dieter say.
Otto’s heart sank. Not now. He wiped his eyes roughly and cleared his nose.
“Dieter,” was Frans’ throaty reply. “Is Otto here?”
“Uh–huh. He’s in the living room. Come in.”
Otto stood up and stretched a smile across his face, feeling like an amateur actor in a local production. He thrust out his hand awkwardly to shake Frans’ meaty paw. Frans obliged with a frown.
“You OK?” Frans said.
“I’ve been talking to Sabine… my wife.”
“Ah.” Frans nodded and stood squarely on his large feet. His squint was noticeable and Otto struggled to find a comfortable point on his face to gaze at.
The silence lengthened, filled only with the ticking of the clock. Frans’ eyes took in the projector and reel of film on the take–up arm.
“You guys been watching movies again?”
Otto twisted his body through forty–five degrees to look at the Bell & Howell. “Yeah. Just home movies.”
“Good?” Frans said, raising his eyebrows.
Otto exchanged a furtive glance with Dieter. Then they replied simultaneously.
“Yeah,” Otto said.
“A few surprises,” Dieter volunteered.
“Ja?” Frans prompted.
“Well, Inez, for one,” Dieter said. “But you knew about her.”
Frans simply nodded his head, causing the folds in his neck to quiver.
“Nothing about a body in the garden,” Otto said, feeling foolish as soon as the words were cold on his lips.
An uncomfortable silence enveloped them. Otto tried to catch Dieter’s eye discreetly.
“How well did you know our parents, Frans?” Dieter said.
Otto froze, shocked by Dieter’s brazen question. Frans twisted his shoulders and pushed his hands into his baggy trouser pockets.
“Not that well, I suppose.” He paused. “How well do any of us really know our parents?”
“What do you mean?” Dieter said.
“Well, what did my pa really do when he worked for the diamond company security team? Did he ever shoot people in the Sperrgebiet?” Frans pulled his hands from his pockets and opened them in a questioning gesture.
“I see what you mean,” Dieter said softly, looking down at the herringbone floor.
“But your pa, Dr Adermann, was a respected man here in Lüderitz, a man of principles and honour,” Frans said.
They glanced at each other awkwardly for a moment. Otto felt his heart beating under his shirt. He took no pleasure in Frans’ compliment, for he doubted its veracity.
“I believe he was a good doctor,” Frans added quickly, studying first Otto then Die
ter. “He was my family’s doctor until he died. He was always kind to my boys.”
An image of the small bodies hanging in the basement stabbed its way into Otto’s mind. Why should a film of such an abhorrent scene be found in his father’s house?
“Did you find out something about him in the films?” Frans asked, gesticulating lazily towards the projector.
Otto felt blood rushing through his ears and realised that he could never bluff his way through a lie detector test.
“Nothing that helps your investigation into the body,” Dieter said with a measured detachment that impressed Otto.
“No?” Frans said with a bemused look on his face, then clapped his hands together. “Well I do have some news to share with you.”
Otto wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt. “Do you want to sit down, Frans?”
Frans nodded. “Ja. I think we should sit down for this.”
Otto remembered being summoned to the headmaster’s office at school for taking the cap off little Jan Smalberger’s fountain pen and putting it back in his blazer pocket as a joke. That sense of foreboding, of guilty apprehension, came flooding back to him.
“Is it the DNA results?” Dieter asked.
“No, it’s something quite unexpected.”
Thirty–Five
Frans declined a coffee and made himself comfortable in Father’s ornately carved walnut armchair, the cracked leather groaning beneath his weight. He rested his elbows on his corpulent rugby thighs and clasped his hands together tightly as his crooked gaze flicked from Otto to Dieter thoughtfully.
“I had a few beers with Willem Krause last night,” Frans said.
“Willem Krause?” Otto questioned.
“He’s an old friend, a local attorney. He’s the executor of your ma’s estate.”
“Oh shit! We’re meant to be meeting him today, aren’t we?” Dieter said.
“Tomorrow, I think,” Otto replied, then narrowed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “Jesus, I can’t remember.”
“Ja, he said he hadn’t read the will to you yet.” Frans looked down at his hands briefly. “Anyway, this is somewhat unusual, but Lüderitz is a small place, as you guys well know. People talk.” Frans looked up at Otto and Dieter, both of whom stared back at him like puppets, waiting for him to pull their strings. “Willem asked me if I had identified the body in the garden yet.” Frans felt uncomfortable about what he knew, biting his lip and wringing his hands.
“You haven’t yet, have you?” Dieter said.
“No, no,” Frans said quickly. “But Willem was very interested.”
“Why would he be interested?” Dieter asked.
Frans shrugged, inclining his head self–consciously, then rubbed his unshaven chin with one hand. “We were just chatting, you understand, but I sensed that something in the will worries him.”
He saw Otto glance at Dieter. Both brothers sat on the edges of their seats, hands clasped together over their knees.
“You are a German family, ja?” Frans said.
Otto and Dieter nodded.
“That’s what we thought too.” He paused. “There’s something in the will about a Jewish person.” Frans stopped and held his hands up in surrender. “All I know is that Willem is worried about it, in the light of the body found in the garden. He simply wanted to know how the investigation is going.”
Otto frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, guys. You’ll find out I’m sure when he reads the will.”
Frans could see that Otto and Dieter were perplexed and edgy, Otto appearing particularly pale and clammy as he fidgeted with his hands. Frans wished that Ingrid had been there as well.
“I couldn’t help but think immediately about our trip to Keetmanshoop,” Frans said.
“Christ! Neil Solomon,” Dieter blurted out, covering his mouth with a cupped hand.
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with him, but…” Frans began.
“How many other Jewish people are connected to our family?” Otto finished.
Frans nodded as a brief silence ensued, all three men sitting with hands clasped together, staring ahead into an uncertain void.
“Why are you telling us this?” Dieter asked.
Frans scratched at the bridge of his nose. “I think we should get Ingrid back here, in case there are issues relating to the will.”
“Issues?” Otto said.
“In any case,” Frans continued, “I should have the DNA results back pretty soon. It would be best if she was here.” He scratched self–consciously at his eyebrow. “It’s just my gut instinct as a policeman.”
Otto stood up and paced around the room. Frans leaned back in the armchair and placed the fleshy tips of his outstretched fingers together.
“So, you think there is a Jewish link with the body from the garden?” Otto asked, stopping to study Frans intently.
“I’m not thinking anything,” Frans said with a dismissive shrug. “I’ll wait for the evidence. Willem is concerned by something he’s seen in the will, that’s all… and I don’t know what that is.”
“Someone Jewish?” Dieter said, pensively.
“Ingrid doesn’t have any children, I’m pretty sure of that,” Otto said.
“You think she might have had a Jewish husband along the way?” Dieter said.
“I’ve never thought of it before,” Otto said. “Maybe. But she never had children.”
“What about you guys?” Frans said.
Dieter and Otto glanced at each other quickly.
“No!” Dieter said boldly. “I have no children.”
“And you, Otto?” Frans asked.
“I have two, and Sabine is first generation German.”
“What about Inez?” Dieter interjected. They all stared at him.
“Inez?” Otto said.
Dieter gestured with his arms. “Why not?”
Otto sat down again, and Frans could see that he had paled even further. He felt empathy for Otto, the youngest and potentially most vulnerable, having to deal with not only the loss of his mother but all of this additional unexpected baggage as well. Bad enough to discover after your mother has died that you had a sister whose existence was kept from you.
“Inez and Neil Solomon…” Otto said quietly, staring at the floor.
Frans slapped his thighs with the palms of his hands. “Look you guys, we’re speculating here, which isn’t doing any good.” He stood up. “Let’s get Ingrid back, see what Willem reveals tomorrow when he reads the will, and wait for the test results from England.”
“If they did have a child… where is it?” Dieter said, gesturing with both hands.
“Jesus,” Otto said, glancing towards the kitchen window. “You don’t think…?”
Thirty–Six
Dieter had every reason to dream that night. Not only because of Frans’ visit, delivering an inexplicable bombshell from which neither he nor Otto had recovered by the time they said their muted goodnights to each other in the darkened hallway, but also because they had sat down and watched – with infinite loathing – the hidden film which Otto had found, sequestered in a remote corner of Ingrid’s wardrobe.
Dieter could not believe that he was watching footage disclosing images of Father associating with fellow Nazis who had become despised the world over for their cruelty. Dieter was certain that some of those present with father had swung from the gallows for their heinous crimes after the war. What was Father doing in the company of these odious men? Dieter felt as if he was observing a pantomime with everyone dressed in costume. But this was no pantomime. The moments captured for eternity on film were chillingly revealing and brutally authentic. They were also uncomfortably close and personal.
In a perverse way he shared Otto’s earlier ponderous sentiments in the profound, stunned minutes that followed the film screening.
“Even though we have just buried her, in a peculiar way I feel a greater sense of antipathy and resentment towards
Mum,” Otto said after the film ended, pausing and tapping a finger against his lips. “Despite the fact that she was not the Nazi up there on the screen.”
“Because you think she knew about it?” Dieter questioned.
“Probably. I mean, she must have known, surely she couldn’t have not known, and yet she chose to collaborate and to perpetuate the fabrication, long after his death.” Otto’s face appeared twisted in pain. “Lying to all of us.”
Dieter stared at the white sheet tacked to the curtains. “What do you remember about Dad?”
“That’s just what I said to Sabine: what will the boys remember about me, about us one day?”
Dieter pulled a face.
“How can we be sure that what we recall from our childhoods, patchy and corrupted by so many factors, in any way accurately reflects what actually happened, the life that we really lived? Do you ever fully understand – as a child – what the hell is going on around you?”
“I don’t remember a lot about Dad. He didn’t beat me, he didn’t neglect me, but I don’t remember him loving me much either. Yeah, he paid for my studies in Cologne and I never went without – as Ingrid always reminds us – but…”
“You’re trying to interpret your memories of Dad, formed when you were a child, from the perspective of an adult who now knows he was a Nazi during the war,” Otto said.
“I don’t follow.”
“You can’t reconcile your childhood memories of Dad, formed in an entirely different context and framework of personal reference, with the way you see and understand the world today,” Otto explained, using his hands to mould air.
“Why not?”
“Because then you were a child who didn’t even know what a Nazi was, and Dad was simply Dad; now it appears he was a Nazi who experimented on prisoners and possibly colluded in murdering children. The brain cannot resolve both versions, Dieter,” Otto said.
“Why not, if I can remember it?”
16mm of Innocence Page 22