16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  “Because they’re vastly different things, adult memory and childhood memory. Even if you knew Dad was a Nazi when you were a boy your viewpoint would have been formed using a different perspective to the one you inhabit now,” Otto said.

  Dieter pulled a face.

  “We’re trapped with adult awareness and the incongruity of childhood glimpses,” Otto said ruefully.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “What about all the people here in Lüderitz? Did they know about Dad’s past when he arrived in 1945? Did they shelter him from the authorities?” Otto said, gesturing with his arm. “Was everyone in on this?”

  Dieter raised his eyebrows. “Frans?”

  “Christ, I mean where did the Nazi criminals flee to after the war? Places without extradition treaties, Venezuela, Brazil, places sympathetic to the Nazi cause… like remote, former German colonies?” Otto continued.

  Dieter looked down and picked at the cuticles of his fingernails. “They would have been very disappointed in me,” he said softly. He felt Otto’s sympathetic gaze on him. “If I had told Mum and Dad I was gay, I just don’t see how the man we saw up there on that screen,” he pointed to the sheet, “or the mother who protectively guarded his past, could have accepted me as their son.” He shook his head dispiritedly. “No way.”

  “Don’t think that, Dieter.”

  “It’s true though, isn’t it? They would have excluded me like they did Inez.” Dieter sat back and placed his hands behind his head.

  Otto sat quietly and began to thread the film back onto the front reel to rewind it. “I don’t understand why Dad didn’t simply destroy this film,” he said. “Why the hell keep it, hidden in a splicer box?”

  Dieter gazed around the room, hands still firmly clasped behind his head. He looked at the paintings of Hamburg and Freiburg and Wismar, the old Gustav Becker grandfather clock, the Bechstein piano with its brass candelabras, the mahogany Biedermeier secretaire chest, and the pair of hinged walnut Gründerzeit side tables. Then he turned to Otto. “Pride?”

  Otto stared back at him as the projector hummed and the reels spun at high speed, rewinding the film. “Christ, Dieter, that’s chilling.”

  The dream came quickly to Dieter that night. The rolled–up carpet leaving the house, being carried by familiar yet obscured faces. That feeling of guilt, of panic, of wrongdoing, of imminent and inevitable discovery and punishment was as strong as ever. It made him sweat, as always, and he would awaken covered in a sheen of perspiration. This time he recognised Frans amongst the faces bearing the carpet, his huge lumbering frame unmistakeable. He tried to determine how large the object concealed within the carpet was. Could it be a person, an adult, a child? Was there indeed anything hidden in the carpet?

  This time there was no skip, there was in its stead a fallen tree with roots radiating in every direction, like the snakes on Medusa’s head. In the background stood a man in a black uniform wearing a shiny cap glistening with silver insignia. Father.

  Dieter awoke and sat up abruptly. He was wet with perspiration, and he was angry. Why had Frans crept into this dream, contaminating and corrupting it? He was clearly not a participant yet his presence and significance in Dieter’s mind had inserted itself into this dream.

  Dieter rubbed his temples in the dark and began to wonder whether anything he recalled in this dream could be regarded as reliable. He no longer trusted his memory.

  Turning on the light, he saw that it was 3am. He wanted suddenly to hear Jim’s voice. He had been away from Hong Kong, and those he loved, for far too long now.

  Thirty–Seven

  Otto called Ingrid in the morning. The sky outside was grey but there was no fog, and only a light offshore breeze that brought with it the smell of guano and seal dung. Ingrid sounded very surprised to hear Otto’s voice.

  “Otto?”

  “Hi, Ingrid.”

  “What’s happened?” she said immediately.

  “Can we not speak unless something has happened?”

  He heard her sigh.

  “I thought you’d gone back to New York,” Otto said. He was sitting in the living room on the velvet sofa, cup of strong black coffee in hand. Dieter was still asleep.

  “I wanted to, believe me.”

  “Frans would like you back in Lüderitz, Ingrid.”

  “Ugh. OK, what’s happened? DNA results back?” Ingrid said with evident disinclination.

  “Not yet. That’s still to come.”

  “Brilliant.”

  Otto drank coffee and caught a glimpse of the full reel of film that contained the grim reality of their poisoned ancestry. “It’s not easy to tell you over the phone. There are two things, actually. One is to do with the will—”

  “I told you I want nothing.”

  “There’s something in it about a Jewish person,” Otto said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know any more than that.” Otto crossed his legs and rested the coffee cup gingerly on the armrest.

  Silence.

  “Do you have any children from any of your marriages, Ingrid?” Otto asked.

  Ingrid snorted. “Hell no.”

  “You have no children by anyone?”

  “I’ve told you, Otto. No. What is this about?”

  Otto felt his pulse quicken, and an uneasiness brewing in his stomach. “Where can a Jewish person have come from in our family?”

  “Jesus,” he heard Ingrid whisper.

  “I know.”

  “Has the will already been read?” Ingrid asked aggressively.

  “No.”

  “How do you know this then?”

  “It’s… complicated. Everyone’s a bit twitchy about the body in the garden, I think,” Otto said.

  “Don’t discuss this with anyone, Otto; keep it to yourself,” Ingrid said quickly.

  Otto frowned. “Frans already knows.”

  “Oh God. How?” Ingrid said.

  “As I said, it’s complicated.”

  All Otto could hear was Ingrid breathing heavily on the line.

  “What’s the other thing?” Ingrid asked.

  Otto bit his lip and looked across at the incriminating reel of film once again. “I found some old film hidden in the house that reveals Dad’s secret past… in Germany.”

  A fertile silence took root yet again.

  “Don’t tell me, he was a Nazi?” Ingrid said, coldness discernible in her voice.

  Otto felt a shroud of icy air descend over him as he watched the fine hairs on his arms rising. “How did you know?”

  Silence.

  “Ingrid?” Otto prompted.

  Ingrid exhaled. “I didn’t know but it suddenly… makes sense,” she said softly.

  “Please come back to Lüderitz, sis. I think Frans wants you back in town, and… there’s something you just have to see.”

  “What is it?”

  “I cannot possibly describe it over the phone,” Otto said.

  Another long silence.

  “Now, I know you’re not interested, but the reading of Mum’s will takes place tomorrow at 2pm; Willem Krause’s offices.” Otto studied his hands, turning them over.

  “OK,” Ingrid said, sighing in resignation.

  Otto smiled with a miniscule rush of surprise and satisfaction.

  “Have you told Frans about Dad yet?” Ingrid said with sudden urgency.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well don’t. Wait for me.”

  Thirty–Eight

  Willem Krause, Attorney at Law, Divorce and Conveyancing, had his premises in the Krabbenhöft und Lampe Building. The plaque proclaiming it a National Monument cited its construction in 1910, and Otto noted with a bitter irony that the original Krabbenhöft und Lampe business had been started in Keetmanshoop. What a poignant place in which to wrap up Mother and Father’s affairs, he thought to himself.

  “My God, it’s really close,” Dieter uttered in surprise as they came upon the building barely two hundred ya
rds from their house.

  The imposing three–storey structure, the top floor of which was incorporated into a double–tier Bavarian gabled roof, was on the corner of Berg and Bismarck Streets, right around the corner from Bülow Street. Shielding his eyes from the searing sunshine, Otto glanced around and back up to their house situated slightly further up the hill.

  “One can see how the discovery of the body in the garden didn’t escape Mr Krause’s attention,” he said.

  The interior of the law firm’s office was air conditioned, smelling vividly of the sturdy kudu leather armchairs and waxed original oak floor. Draped over one of the chairs was a sable and cream mink coat that protectively enveloped Ingrid. She smelled overpoweringly of rose petals and appeared immersed in thought.

  “Ah!” Otto said, moving towards her with arms outstretched.

  She sat with her legs crossed in a crushed silk dress that glowed like sunset, but didn’t get up, barely moving a muscle in greeting. “Otto.”

  Otto bent over awkwardly and managed to plant a light kiss on one cold cheek before surrendering and straightening. “You just disappeared after the funeral… we thought you’d returned to New York,” he said.

  Ingrid glanced briefly at Dieter without a flicker of acknowledgement. “Yes, well… I’m here now. You can tell Frans to call off the search party.”

  “I don’t think it was like that, Ingrid,” Otto said, suppressing irritation with difficulty. Why was Ingrid always so bristly, he wondered?

  An oiled wooden door opened and a haggard man in a dark pinstripe suit appeared. He smiled perfunctorily, revealing angular teeth stained yellow by nicotine. “Mr Adermann, Dr Adermann, Mrs… er… Forsyt,” he said, and gestured with his arm for them to follow him.

  “Forsythe,” Ingrid said as she gathered her coat.

  “My apologies, madam,” the gaunt man said. “I am Willem Krause, executor of your mother’s estate. Please come in.”

  He was leathery and drawn like a palm date, prune–textured skin ineffectively hidden by a short grey beard. Behind large gold–framed spectacles his yellowed eyes darted about actively. There were only three padded seats arranged in front of his excessive leather–inset desk, behind which he retreated, settling into a plush leather armchair beneath a gold–framed oil painting of Felsenkirche.

  “First of all, may I offer my condolences on the passing of your mother, Ute Adermann? We have known each other, and indeed been friends, for over thirty years. I knew your father well too and I was also the executor of his estate.” Krause spoke slowly and deliberately, in measured legal tones, not a word or an intonation out of place. A noticeable Teutonic inflection dominated his vowels. “They were fine people, Ernst and Ute, I need not tell you – well liked and well respected in our community.”

  Otto shifted in his padded chair. He studied Krause’s deep–set eyes, the eyes of a principled and conservative man; the same eyes that would have looked upon Father while they recorded Father’s last will and testament, God knows how many years ago. What had made Krause decide to confide in Frans over a beer, Otto wondered?

  “Would any of you care for a smoke?” Krause asked, lifting an ornate wooden box off his desk. “Or a brandy; whisky perhaps?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind if I smoke?” Krause said without inhibition as he lifted a cigar from the box and clipped the ends. “I find it focuses my mind.”

  Ingrid exhaled audibly. Clouds of aromatic blue smoke soon encircled Krause, who seemed lost in his own world as he puffed, his puckered cheeks moving in and out like a blacksmith’s bellows.

  “When did you first meet my mother and father?” Otto asked.

  Krause continued to puff, raising a solitary finger in the air to signal that he had heard. He eventually pulled the cigar from his mouth and inspected it with satisfaction.

  “It was around 1950, a long time ago.” He smiled thinly as smoke curled out of his mouth.

  “So you didn’t know our sister Inez, then?” Otto added.

  “I never heard your mother or your father speak of her.”

  “Did you know about her?” Otto pressed.

  Krause’s eyes reacted and flicked from Otto, to Dieter, to Ingrid. “We’ll come to all that.”

  Ingrid crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest. Otto glanced at her and tried to elicit eye contact, but he could see the hardness set in her face.

  “Now in many ways it is not a complicated will,” Krause said, resting one elbow on the desk with cigar aloft while the other hand opened a folder on his desk. His head was bowed as he studied the contents. He looked up and gestured at the three of them. “You are the only three surviving children of Ernst and Ute Adermann.” He looked at them. “Correct?”

  They nodded. Dieter cleared his throat.

  “You did bring your passports with you, didn’t you?” Krause added, closing the folder on his desk almost as an afterthought.

  Otto reached into his jacket pocket and produced his passport. “Yes.”

  Dieter did the same. Ingrid sat with her arms folded for what seemed an eternity to Otto, before she reneged and produced her passport. Krause leaned forward and collected them from the front of his desk before pressing an intercom.

  “Miss Meyer, please come in.”

  A young blonde woman with her hair tied up and secured by an ornately carved wooden hairpin entered and took the passports.

  “Two copies of each please, my dear,” Krause said with a smile. “Right, where was I?” he continued, opening the folder again as smoke enveloped him. “Ah yes, it is a relatively simple will insofar as you, the three direct descendants, are concerned. In summary the estate of Ute Adermann is to be divided equally between all three surviving children.” He paused to puff on the cigar as he turned a page. “Everything was bequeathed to your mother upon your father’s death in 1975 on condition, something called a fideicommissum, that the only benefactors of the estate on your mother’s death would be Ingrid née Adermann, Dieter Adermann and Otto Adermann.”

  Krause paused and looked up, as if to check that they were still present. “The estate includes the house on Bülow Street, the premises from which your father practised in Keetmanshoop, and cash assets totalling approximately four hundred thousand rands. As none of you currently resides in Lüderitz it might be best to sell the properties to release their equity.” He looked up at them. “But that is up to you. Any questions?”

  Dieter cleared his throat. “What happened to Father’s practice here in Lüderitz?”

  “He sold that when he retired, about six years before his death,” Krause said.

  “But he kept the one in Keetmanshoop?” Dieter said.

  “Yes,” Krause replied with apparent disinterest. Then all of a sudden he spoke again. “I believe his partner in Keetmanshoop, Dr Abert, continued to work for several more years.”

  Krause looked down at the folder and puffed on the cigar, appearing to savour every moment of it. “There are a few specific items that have been bequeathed to individuals.” He paused. “The Walther 30-06 and Anschütz hunting rifles are left to the oldest son, Dieter; the Bell & Howell projector and equipment to Otto, along with all the oil paintings. The Bechstein piano and Biedermeier secretaire chest go to Ingrid.”

  “I don’t want them,” Ingrid interrupted. “You can have them, Otto.”

  Krause looked both bemused and irritated as he made a casual hand gesture. “These are trivial matters to sort out afterwards.”

  A gentle knock on the door was followed by Miss Meyer entering and returning the passports and several sheets of photocopied paper. Krause studied the photocopies as Dieter retrieved and distributed the passports.

  Krause pointed at Otto with the cigar. “Otto?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, you are the only one with children, is that correct?”

  Otto glanced first at Dieter and then at Ingrid, both of whom nodded. “Yes.”


  “Your mother has them down as Karl and Max… both Adermanns?”

  “That is correct.”

  “They must have been born subsequent to your father’s death as he did not list them in his will,” Krause muttered, as though talking to himself.

  “Yes,” Otto said, “the oldest is only nine.”

  “And their mother, your wife, is Sabine… née Goethe.” He fixed his eyes on Otto. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Otto said.

  “German?”

  Otto felt an uneasiness that was difficult to place, but confirmed the information.

  Krause nodded. “OK. But neither you, Ingrid, nor you, Dieter, have any children by any relationship whatsoever?” He studied their faces in turn. “According to the details in the will.”

  “No,” Dieter said.

  Ingrid slowly shook her head. “Why do you ask?”

  Krause leaned forward and placed both elbows on the desk, locking his fingers together carefully so that the cigar remained uppermost in his left hand. “This is where we find something unusual.” He puffed on his cigar, releasing a cloud of smoke. “When your father left his entire estate to your mother he did so on explicit condition that the only benefactors upon your mother’s death should be his surviving children,” he gestured towards them, “namely you three.”

  The cigar plugged his mouth again, his eyes thoughtful. Otto wasn’t sure whether they were expected to say anything. Did Krause know that Frans had spoken to them? Had he wanted Frans to reveal his concerns?

  “Did Mum agree to this condition in her will?” Ingrid asked. “I mean, Dad’s been dead almost ten years.”

  “That is a fair point,” Krause acknowledged, pointing the cigar casually towards Ingrid. “Fideicommissum is a very old and popular legal institution in Roman law. It was commonly employed to keep property in families. By invoking this principle your father clearly intended to keep his assets strictly in the family.”

  “Did Mum know this?” Ingrid asked.

  “She would have had to consent to the fideicommissum and conditions when she accepted his inheritance in 1975,” Krause said.

  “What conditions?” Dieter asked, sitting forward.