Silence

by Mechtild Borrmann

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2011 Pendragon Bielefeld

  Translation copyright © 2015 Aubrey Botsford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Wer das Schweigen bricht by Pendragon Bielefeld in Germany in 2011. Translated from German by Aubrey Botsford. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477829097

  ISBN-10: 1477829091

  Cover design by M.S. Corley

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920037

  CONTENTS

  CHARACTERS

  DEDICATION

  History: easy to . . .

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  CHARACTERS

  THEN:

  The childhood friends:

  Therese Pohl . . . . . born 1922

  Leonard Kramer . . . . . born 1921

  Hanna Höver . . . . . born 1921

  Jacob Kalder . . . . . born 1920

  Alwine Kalder . . . . . born 1922

  Wilhelm Peters . . . . . born 1920

  Siegmund Pohl . . . . . Doctor, Therese Pohl’s father

  Margarete Pohl . . . . . Therese Pohl’s mother

  Gustav Höver . . . . . Farmer, Hanna and Paul Höver’s father

  August Hollmann . . . . . Captain in the SS

  1998:

  Robert Lubisch . . . . . Doctor, Friedhelm Lubisch’s son

  Rita Albers . . . . . Journalist

  Karl van den Boom . . . . . Police sergeant

  Manfred Steiner . . . . . Police chief inspector, Homicide

  Brand . . . . . Police inspector, Homicide

  Theo Gerhard . . . . . Retired police sergeant

  Thomas Köbler . . . . . Journalist, friend of Rita Albers

  Tillmann and Therese Mende . . . . . Entrepreneurs

  For Peter Gogolin

  History: easy to think about, difficult to see for those who experience it in their own flesh.

  Albert Camus (1913–1960)

  Chapter 1

  November 12, 1997

  How quiet. Had it always been so quiet here? Robert Lubisch stood at the window and looked out over the garden.

  At the far end of the extensive grounds, the tall Douglas firs glowed, almost blue, against a milky sky. Strands of early-morning mist lay on the lawn like cotton wool, shrouding the rhododendron bushes and the plinth of the life-sized marble Diana, frozen with her bow held up in a defensive pose. She had always been thus frozen; only occasionally, when the midday summer sun fell vertically on the garden, had the stone ever glowed warm and golden.

  He still remembered the day she was placed there. Part of the fence had needed to be torn down so that the truck could come into the garden. He had been eleven or twelve years old. Her robe left her right breast uncovered, and in those first few weeks, anytime he felt unobserved, he used to climb up on the plinth and run his fingers over the perfectly sculpted nipple. The slight irregularities and the smooth, cool mound beneath his fingertips had aroused his first sexual fantasies.

  He imagined Diana in his small garden in Hamburg, crammed into the space between the terrace and his neighbor’s hedge. He smiled.

  Too big. It was like that with everything he associated with his father. To him, Robert, everything had always seemed too big. The gestures, the house, the parties, the speeches, the demands, and the expectations.

  Taking care of Diana would fall to the art and antiques dealer who had already begun to sell off the pictures, sculptures, books, and furniture. Perhaps the buyers of the house would like to keep her.

  Robert Lubisch carried into the hall a box containing documents, his mother’s jewelry box, and some books he did not want to part with. A few bubble-wrapped pictures and sculptures stood against the wall. These were the things he would be taking back to Hamburg.

  The decision to sell the house had been a sober and logical one, but now it hurt. He had been close to his mother, who had died six years ago, but he had never lived up to his father’s standards. And now, here in this gradually emptying house, he realized he no longer had to try; it was over. But he also realized—and here lay the pain—that he would now remain inadequate forever.

  His gaze fell on the broad, mahogany-hued staircase that led from the hall up to the first floor. When he was a boy, the polished handrail had made a perfect slide.

  This villa on the edge of Essen, between the Schellenberger Forest and Lake Baldeney, had been important to his father—a status symbol such as only a few could afford. Over the years, his parents had no doubt come to feel at home here, and his father had stayed on after his mother’s death. Eight bedrooms and more than three thousand square feet.

  He went back into the study.

  Frau Winter, the housekeeper, who had run the house for thirty years, had found his father here ten days earlier. He had been sitting in his armchair, with his reading glasses on his nose and the newspaper in his lap. “He gave the impression of being busy,” she had said on the telephone, in answer to his question as to whether he had died peacefully. “Quite busy, to the end.”

  The death announcement Robert had issued in the name of the family was lost among half- and full-page notices from the city council, the Association of Displaced Persons, and the Lubisch Corporation.

  More than two hundred mourners came to pay their respects. The church choir sang “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed,” and three buglers played the “Last Post” at the graveside. The wreaths were piled so high, it was almost impossible to read the inscriptions. They came from the mayor, the planning department,
the city council, various companies his father had worked with, the Association of Displaced Persons, to which he had given over part of his fortune while he was still alive, and, of course, the Lubisch Corporation, which he had sold five years earlier as Lubisch Inc. The Lubisch name had remained; the old man had insisted on it.

  He ran his fingers over the highly polished walnut desktop. He had not come here much since his mother’s death. Birthdays and the obligatory Easter and Christmas. His father had seen him as his successor in the construction business. When Robert decided to study medicine, he and his father had fallen out, and although they both avoided the subject in the years that followed, it had always stood between them; he heard the reproach in the old man’s voice whenever the conversation turned to the company.

  His father ran the firm until his seventy-fourth year, stubbornly clinging to the belief that his son would change his mind, that he might yet “see sense.”

  Robert Lubisch looked at his watch. The real estate agent was coming at nine o’clock with the first prospective buyers. If they wanted the house to be spick-and-span when they moved in, he would have to engage one of those house-clearance companies.

  The term stung him; he felt coarse. What would remain of the great Friedhelm Lubisch? A company name and the symbols standing here in the hall, which he would pick up and hold in his hand in Hamburg from time to time.

  He emptied out the desk drawers. At the bottom he found letters from his mother, carefully bundled together. He smiled. So his father had been like that too, the old mule. If he were still alive, he would vehemently deny this small show of sentimentality and probably claim he had kept them for his mother’s sake.

  Beside the letters, he found a cigar box made of dark, fine-grained wood. Incised into an oval of mother-of-pearl set in the center of the lid, a broad-hoofed horse dragged a covered wagon. The carved words, “Brazil 100 Percent Tobacco,” had worn away. Inside, he found an SS identity card, a safe-conduct pass, and discharge papers for a prisoner of war. At the very bottom lay a sepia-tinted photograph with a serrated, yellowed border. It showed a young woman. The picture on the identity card was unrecognizable, but the signature read “Wilhelm Peters.” The safe-conduct pass bore no name. Only the discharge papers showed his father’s name.

  Robert looked at the papers. The black spots on the identity card were caused by blood. His father had been from Silesia. An ordinary soldier, he had been taken prisoner just before the end of the war. But why did he have a stranger’s papers?

  He heard the real estate agent’s car coming up the drive. He returned the documents to the cigar box, closed the lid, and tossed it into the cardboard box along with the photograph albums and files that he would sort out when he got home.

  In Hamburg again that night, he put the box in the back corner of his study. It would be three months before he paid any further attention to it.

  Chapter 2

  February 18, 1998

  Maren Lubisch was sitting in the living room that evening, hunched over one of the photo albums. Robert sat down beside her and looked with astonishment at the pictures of his father in his midforties. Maren laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was you.” He had the same high forehead and prematurely gray hair, the same straight nose, and the narrow, somewhat severe mouth. From his mother’s side he had inherited only his physique. Whereas his father was a rather hulking presence in the pictures, Robert had a much different build, his limbs being long and slender.

  One photo showed them both in the study, behind the desk. Robert, age nine or ten, was on the armrest of the old mahogany chair, beside his father. They both looked surprised. Maren was about to turn the page when he put his hand between the pages and pulled the album closer.

  In the photo, an open cigar box lay on the blotter.

  “Wait.”

  He fetched the cigar box and placed it next to the album.

  “Do you see that?” He pointed at the picture and felt the kind of unease that arises when something long forgotten takes shadowy form. He knew something about those papers.

  He stroked the mother-of-pearl oval and opened the lid. The faint, sour-sweet scent of fine tobacco wafted toward him. The smell brought back memories. It was as if he could feel the pressure of the armrest on his buttocks and thighs as he pictured those few intimate moments he had had with his father.

  “I deserted.” He heard the old man’s voice as if from a great distance.

  He had been fighting with an armored division in the lower Rhine, and when the Allies’ big offensive began and his two closest comrades fell down dead within minutes of each other, he lost his nerve.

  Yes, he remembered it now.

  His father had said, “I ran without thinking. Just away, away from the front. Away from all those dead men.”

  And one of those dead bodies had been SS Squad Leader Wilhelm Peters. His identity card was in his breast pocket, a folded sheet of paper with a photograph rendered unrecognizable by dried blood. In his coat pocket he found the safe-conduct pass, a small, linen-bound booklet. He removed the dead man’s overcoat and tunic, appropriated the papers for himself, and, as SS Squad Leader Wilhelm Peters, managed to get through the German lines to the Ruhr. What he actually wanted to do was get home to Breslau, but people said the Russians were there and civilians were trekking long distances to get away from their homeland. In the Ruhr, he got rid of the coat and tunic and was taken prisoner under his real name, Friedhelm Lubisch. He was not released until 1948. He had tried to trace his parents and sister, and found out two years later, through the Red Cross, that they had stayed in Breslau and died there.

  Robert Lubisch sat in silence for a long time.

  He had gone into his father’s study many times, in those days, and asked to hear the story. Over and over again. How close they had been.

  Maren took the portrait of the woman out of the box. “What about the woman? Didn’t he say anything about her?”

  “No,” said Robert, shaking his head. “He never showed me that picture, or if he did, I don’t remember.”

  “Could it be your grandmother? Or an aunt?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Maren turned the photograph over. On the back were the words “Photo Studio Heuer, Kranenburg.”

  “Look at this.” She showed him the back of the picture. “Kranenburg’s in the lower Rhine somewhere, isn’t it? Maybe the picture was among this Peters person’s papers. Maybe she was his girlfriend or his wife?”

  They sat up late into the night, talking and speculating about who the woman might be, and the man too, this SS squad leader. Maren said, “SS squad leader” repeatedly; the “SS” hissed between her teeth, as if the letters had to be spat out. All at once the documents became important. Significant. Serious. The man was dead, perhaps the woman too. By turns, again and again, they reached for the photograph in which this woman smiled at them in an almost intimate manner. That was not how one smiled at a stranger. Not even at a photographer. Who was present? This Wilhelm Peters? Or Robert’s father? After all, he had been there at the end of the war too.

  Maren said, “Maybe she’s still alive.”

  They did not say any more, and he did not make a decision. But it was working away inside him. Perhaps she really had been this Peters’s girlfriend, but perhaps she had also been close to his father, so close that he had kept her picture all these years. But why had he never shown it, never mentioned the woman?

  Perhaps his exalted father, the man above suspicion, had a secret after all. Robert liked this idea. Perhaps a weakness would be revealed, a small dent in the old man’s smooth untouchability, against which he had struggled for so many years.

  Robert smiled. It would be a kind of liberation for him to be able to cut his all-powerful father down to size. He wanted to know. Just for himself.

  Chapter 3

  April 20, 1998

 
Spring had followed hard upon a mild winter, and the thermometer had risen to a summerlike seventy-seven in recent days. The meadows of the lower Rhine were a rich green, sprinkled with the yellow of dandelions and the occasional long stalk and small pink flowers of lady’s smock. The farms and villages looked as if they had been casually strewn across the plain by a huge hand, groups of houses cowering amid the flat expanse.

  Robert Lubisch had been invited to a conference at Raboud University in Nimwegen, and he took the opportunity to investigate Photo Studio Heuer in Kranenburg.

  Reaching the place late in the morning, he came upon a roundabout and then a street like a wide slash, on both sides of which the houses of dark red brick were thrust forward like front-row spectators. Small businesses and storefronts lay beneath steep roofs. Only a few people were about.

  He parked his car in one of the bays at the side of the street and went into a pub with snow-white net curtains in the windows. The tables had heavy-duty, cream-colored tablecloths, and on them stood small porcelain vases with colorful plastic posies of the kind that could be kept clean with a feather duster. In a flowing hand, a slate by the counter advertised asparagus dishes. It was still early; the restaurant was empty.

  A plump woman stood behind the counter, opening letters with a steak knife and casually discarding the empty envelopes into a wastepaper basket at her feet. An elderly man sat opposite her behind a half-full glass of beer, smoking unfiltered cigarettes. When Robert Lubisch took a stool at the bar, they both looked at him expectantly. He wished them a good morning.

  “There won’t be any food for another hour,” said the woman. “At twelve.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. I didn’t want to eat anything, thank you.”

  He ordered an espresso and took the portrait from the pocket of his linen jacket. “I wanted to ask,” he began awkwardly, “whether you could maybe help me out.”

  He placed the photograph upside-down on the counter and pointed at the stamp. “I’m looking for this address. Photo Studio Heuer.” He smiled with embarrassment. “It may not be there anymore, but . . .”