‘That is a sad story,’ said Marina.
Jorge continued to stare at the photo for a few moments more. Then he turned towards us and said: ‘It is sad, but the future is with you. When will you two young people start producing some grandchildren to liven things up?’
Marina was still holding my hand. I could feel my own palm grow hot and a little sweaty. I was about to reply that it was too early to start thinking about things like that when Jorge steered us back into the living room. Fresh glasses of champagne were being passed around and my mother and her friend Kika fell upon Marina as we entered.
‘Caro,’ my mother said to me, ‘please can you see what is wrong with the hi-fi, I would like some music.’ Then, to Marina: ‘Pietro is wonderful when it comes to fixing things.’
Marina nodded but I could see she was just being polite. That’s probably because it sometimes takes me a while to get around to fixing things in the apartment. She finds that annoying. Anyway, when my mother says ‘fixing things’, she really just means being able to use them. I went over to the hi-fi and, predictably, all I had to do was switch the setting from AUX to CD. I pressed play. Toquinho’s tender voice introduced his Samba para Vinicius:
… eu queria agradecer a presença das pessoas que estão aqui no palco comigo; essas pessoas vocês não podem ver não, mas eles estão aqui, nas sombras, nas cores, nas luzes, do meu lado, estão em mim, em cada nota que eu toco, em cada intervalo de melodia, en cada acorde que eu faço, em cada musica que eu canto…1
‘Ah, o poetinha,’ said Jorge wistfully. I looked around the room. No one was speaking; everyone was straining to hear the words of Toquinho’s lyrical recollection of his friend, the poet and musician Vinicius de Moraes.
… uma pessoa, uma pessoa especial, que está mais perto de mim que todas as outras, ele que foi meu filho e pai, irmão e amigo, aí onde você estiver, um beijo pra você, Vinicius de Moraes…2
‘Pietro, change the song, it’s too sad,’ said Kika.
‘No, no, leave it,’ said my mother. She had reclined on the sofa and closed her eyes. ‘This is a sad country. We have all come from somewhere else; we have all lost someone. We should not hide from that.’
Maybe she is right. Maybe this is a country of loss. Is that why we have samba and bossa nova, why we love saudade so much? Is it to combat this sense of loss that we throw ourselves so passionately into dancing and lovemaking? Does the fanatic support of our football team seduce us into believing in some form of togetherness? And who is my mother thinking of? Is it her estranged husband, my father Gorka, shrewdly squeezing the last penny out of his clients? Is it her own mother Anna-Maria, my avó, tending to Seu Otto in the hospital? Is it her father Horst who died when my mother was still a young girl? Or is it her own grandmother Freya, poor Freya, sent here in disgrace with a baby in her womb, never to see her homeland again? If my family’s history is representative, then this is a sad country indeed.
*
We stayed to watch my mother cut the birthday cake which Kika had brought for her, then we made our excuses. I had the impression that my mother’s initial enthusiasm for Marina had cooled a little. Marina had grown quiet – she doesn’t take pleasure in sadness the way my mother does. We said goodbye to Jorge who used the opportunity to explain to me his recommended route back to Santa Catarina, avoiding various diversions and roadworks. Then he asked me whether I had ever visited Pomerode, a small town half an hour north of Blumenau.
‘No,’ I replied truthfully.
‘I go there once a year with Anna-Maria to visit your grandfather’s grave,’ said Jorge.
‘That’s where he is buried?’ I asked. I had no idea; I had always assumed he was buried in Blumenau.
‘Yes,’ replied Jorge. ‘And if you ever feel like coming with me, well, just tell me. You may find it interesting; there are many in Pomerode like your friend Seu Otto.’
‘Thank you Jorge, I would like to go with you.’
Jorge squeezed my shoulder with his bearlike paw. ‘I haven’t been yet this year. I’ll probably go in a month or two, when it’s not so hot. There is a bit of a climb to the cemetery. If you’d like to come, then just tell your grandmother and she will get a message to me, ok?’
‘I’ll do that,’ I said. Jorge squeezed my shoulder again, then Marina and I left the house.
Marina slept for most of the drive back to Santa Catarina. I thought about this sad country of ours, and whether it really is characterised by a sense of loss. Then I thought about Seu Otto and how he too may be representative. It seems that the loss that has affected him most is neither the loss of his homeland nor of his parents, but rather the loss of his friend Siggi. That is something I would like to know more about, though I shall have to tread carefully. I do not want to upset an old man.
1 I would like to thank the people who are on this stage with me. You can’t see them but they are here in the shadows, in the colours, in the lights; they are here beside me and within me, in every note and every chord I play, in every break in the music, in every song I sing…
2 There is one person, one special person, who is closer to me than all the rest; he was my father and my son, my brother and my friend. Vinicius de Moraes, wherever you are, I blow you a kiss…
Chapter 14
THE MORNING of the operation was busy. Fernanda took my blood pressure, pulse and temperature. Anna-Maria arrived halfway through and unloaded a mountain of fresh fruit which she had just bought and which Fernanda told her I was not allowed to eat. Anna-Maria took this personally, as is her way. I explained to her that it was part of the protocol for a general anaesthetic but she kept repeating, ‘But fruit is so healthy.’ Once Fernanda had left, Dr. da Silva passed by to warn me that I would probably feel disorientated when I woke up. He also said that I would be on a stronger concentration of intravenous morphine for the first 24 hours after the operation and that we’d see how things went after that.
Pietro arrived in the middle of the morning, once the nurses had left. I was happy to see him; talking to him would take my mind off the operation. I prepared myself for more inquiries about my family. I have nothing to hide, but they are not the happiest memories. Pietro, however, had other ideas. His first question was:
‘How did you meet Siggi?’
Meeting Siggi… now that, on the other hand, is a happy memory. I closed my eyes and thought back to the Jungvolk, and to the Hitler Youth Mutprobe.
*
I was 13 years old and still a member of the Jungvolk. In order to graduate into the Hitler Jugend I knew I would have to pass the Mutprobe – the test of courage. We were all very nervous about it – we didn’t know what to expect. It was up to the senior HJ leader to devise the Mutprobe and it differed from place to place. Making boys jump off a five-metre diving board was popular in summer, even for boys who couldn’t swim. There had been a time when boys were made to jump wearing a helmet. When you hit the water, the helmet strap would jerk your head back. One boy broke his neck that way; after that, jumping with helmets was banned.
I was initiated in the winter of 1943. We had been told to wear our summer sports gear, but we had still not been told what the initiation would entail. We were standing around the stove in our old wooden Heim, nervously chatting to each other and trying to warm our shaking hands with the little heat that the stove gave out. The two supervisors who were also our schoolteachers had left us. They said that a more senior HJ leader would be conducting the initiation. The minutes dragged interminably as we stood there shivering. I thought to myself how different things had been back on that warm summer afternoon when I had sat by the open window, observing the honeysuckle tapping agaist the window frame and drinking in its intoxicating fragrance.
Although we were, for once, left to our own devices, I don’t think that any of us felt like playing the usual pranks. Now that I think back to that cold January afternoon, I realise that the waiting and the nervousness were part of the Mutprobe. At the time I just thought that the HJ
leader had been delayed by the blizzard which was blowing outside the frosty windows.
Despite our vigil, we were caught off guard when the door was flung open by a tall, thin figure wrapped in an ankle length black leather overcoat. He strode purposefully into our wooden Heim, admitting a flurry of snow particles. He looked slowly around; I remember being struck by the pale blue of his eyes, almost like a husky’s. Then he announced: ‘So, Jungs, jetzt geht’s los!’ before striding back out of the room and indicating to us to follow.
Outside the Heim, standing shivering in the snow, was another Kameradschaft of boys, also in summer sports gear. I recognised a few of them from my school, but they were members of a different Heim. The HJ leader in the leather coat paired us off – myself with a thin blond boy. We were told to stand in two lines, then the HJ leader marched us to the boating lake in the park. In summer I often used to swim in that lake, but now the ice was frozen thick and the cafés and boating houses – always so busy in summer – were boarded up and covered with a thin layer of snow.
We marched onto the lake and stopped more or less in the centre where a number of pick axes were lying. It was evident that there had been a couple of holes in the ice about ten metres apart but that they had recently refrozen. We were instructed to open them again and took it in turns to hack away at the ice with the pick axes. As we hacked, shards of ice flew up and stung our faces. Meanwhile the HJ leader walked up and down between the holes, dragging his foot and clearing a little gully between the two holes in the ankle deep snow that covered the ice.
Once the holes had been reopened to a width of a metre or so, we were made to line up facing the HJ leader. He explained the Mutprobe to us: we had to swim under the ice from one hole to the other by following the line of light that we would see through the ice where he had cleared the gully. When we got to the hole on the other side we should pull ourselves out with the help of the rope which would be in the water and whose other end he would be holding. If anyone couldn’t swim, he said, they should go home now and wait until the summer to undertake the Mutprobe. At this a couple of boys left. I knew that one of them at least could swim but I was not surprised that he left. I was also feeling nervous and I was the best swimmer in our Heim. In fact, I had won a number of races in the boating lake over the summer, including a prize for swimming underwater. If I was afraid, I imagined that the others would be a lot more afraid.
The HJ leader made me go first – perhaps he knew about my swimming success of the summer. I was aware of the anxious faces of my friends as they watched me take off my clothes. I was standing naked and barefoot in the snow but my heart was beating so fast that I did not feel the cold. The HJ leader told me to jump into the hole rather than climb in since I would probably cut myself on the jagged edge of the ice. ‘So, hinein mit Dir!’ he shouted.
I took a couple of deep breaths and thought back to the sunny summer evenings I had spent splashing around with my friends in that same lake. Though the lake looked very different now, I tried to think of it as a friend. I imagined those cold dark waters welcoming me as an old acquaintance now making a surprise visit out of season. Then I closed my eyes and jumped.
As soon as I came up to the surface, I was forced to blow out all the air in my lungs. The temperature of the water took my breath away. I was panting violently and treading water as best I could. I saw a faint fog hanging before my eyes; the fog cleared and I wondered briefly whether it had in fact been there at all. The HJ leader observed me with a look of detached amusement. I knew the direction I had to swim and, as soon as my breathing had stabilised, I ducked under the ice.
The line of the light above me was not hard to see; from below it was a beautiful sapphire blue dividing the murky darkness on either side. I followed the line swimming a sort of breaststroke on my back so as not to lose sight of it for a moment. Occasionally I reached out to touch the ice above me; it felt jagged and rough. I also remember thinking how strangely peaceful it was beneath the ice. Then, almost before I knew it and long before my breath would have run out, the murkiness faded and I found myself surfacing in the second hole, surrounded by applauding boys. The HJ leader threw the end of the rope to me. I tried to seize it but my limbs were so cold that my movements were like those of a drunk. Finally I got a grip and, with the help of two other boys, I was dragged over the lip of the ice. My body was shaking but internally I felt a suffusion of warmth. I was reminded of the way my feet had felt when I first walked in the cold water of the Baltic, back at Zoppot, on the day of my initiation into the Jungvolk. And now I had passed the initiation into the Hitler Youth.
Someone threw me a towel with which to rub myself down. While I was putting my clothes back on, another boy completed the swim, and then another after him. I stayed by the exit hole to help others get out of the water – that was the hardest part. After I had thrown the third boy the towel, I saw that the blond boy with whom I had been paired off was about to go. However, there was something different about his manner. We had all been terrified but it looked as if he was just pretending, just going through the motions. In any case, he jumped in just as we all had and then ducked down under the ice without waiting for his breathing to stabilize. The HJ leader and the other boys were still making their way towards the exit hole when I suddenly saw the boy swim straight past. He was swimming much faster than the rest of us had, possibly because he was doing a normal breaststroke with his belly to the ground and only looking up at intervals.
The HJ leader arrived just in time to see the boy’s legs disappear under the ice on the other side of the hole. I was standing closest to him; he looked at me and barked, ‘Schnell!’ I suppose we had been trained to respond to just this sort of situation. I didn’t hesitate: I jumped into the water fully clothed and, without coming up for air, I took two strokes in the direction the boy had been swimming. Almost immediately I saw his legs in front of me and I grabbed one of his ankles. This must have terrified him because he lashed out and spun round at the same time. Once he had seen me, I swam back towards the exit hole which was no more than a couple of metres behind us. As soon as I had emerged, the other boy’s head appeared beside me. This time the cheering was a good deal louder and even the HJ leader looked relieved. We climbed out and I was introduced to Siegfried – that was the blond boy’s name. He was ordered to accompany me back to the Heim since I no longer had any dry clothes. The Mutprobe continued but only once the HJ leader had instructed the remaining boys to swim on their backs and not to lose sight of the line of light above them.
As we ran back to the Heim, Siegfried told me that he had deliberately swum past the hole just to scare us. Later, when I got to know him better, I realised that was just the kind of thing he would do. Siggi had no fear, you only had to watch him climb to know that. At the time I just thought he was too proud to admit that I had saved his life.
*
I opened my eyes and saw that Pietro was chewing the end of his pen and looking thoughtfully at me. Then he said, ‘Do you think Siggi was telling the truth? Was it just a trick to scare you?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Siggi was different to the rest of us.’
‘In what way?’ asked Pietro.
‘Well, he was a phenomenal athlete, a natural sportsman. If I was a better swimmer, it was only because I trained whenever I could. Siggi was a runner and a climber. Throughout our time in the HJ he helped and encouraged me. When we started learning to climb at the summer camp in the mountains, he would show me where to place my hands and feet if I got stuck. In winter we used to run barefoot cross-country races around Bochum; they were supposed to toughen us up.’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Pietro.
‘When Siggi saw that I was tiring he would run next to me for a while, making jokes and chatting away. At the beginning I thought that he did all this out of gratitude because I had saved his life. Later I came to realise that it was just the way he was and that, in any case, it would not have mattered to him whether I act
ually did or didn’t save his life under the ice; what mattered was that I had been prepared to, and for that he granted me his friendship unreservedly.’
‘How did he feel about water?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘After that incident, was he afraid of the water? If he really had nearly drowned, then he might have been afraid of swimming after that. That’s what happened to one of my surfing friends. He almost drowned and now he’s stopped surfing,’ said Pietro.
‘No, that didn’t happen to Siggi,’ I said. ‘Far from it. He once swam with me across a big mountain lake at night, to the girls’ camp on the other side. It was a long way; we had to swim for almost an hour. It was also severely prohibited.’
Pietro sat forward in his chair. ‘Did the girls know you were going to swim over?’ he asked.
‘They knew we were going to try,’ I said. ‘It was forbidden for girls to be in the boys’ camp, and for boys to be in the girls’ camp, but on some days boys and girls were allowed to hike together. We also used to have lessons together once a week – we were at the camp for six weeks, after all. Christiane was in the BDM camp, on the other side of the lake.’
‘Christiane, the one you were telling me about, the girl from the Nuremberg rally?’
‘Yes, exactly,’ I nodded. ‘She was a couple of years older than me. When I went to the camp she was already a junior BDM leader. That was in the summer of ’44. And, although we were young, there were not many HJ boys who were older than us. The older ones had already been conscripted.’
‘Was Christiane also from Bochum?’
‘Yes, from the same Heim in fact. I had seen her at Dienst, but the first time I actually spoke to her was on the march to Nuremberg. Later, I got to know her better at the summer camp. When the BDM and the HJ hiked together, the boys had to walk in front of the girls. But sometimes, at the end of the day, we were allowed to walk side by side. Christiane and I walked together whenever we could.
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