Rita was about to explode, when the young man came back in and said to his colleague, “They have them.”
The fat one nodded with satisfaction. “You see? Order is half of life. We’ve investigated the matter.” He stretched out the word in-ves-ti-gat-ed, emphasizing every syllable. “The archives are in Kleve, and the files are available.”
Half an hour later, she swapped her bicycle for her runabout and drove to Kleve. They had been notified. She had to identify herself and was allowed to view the files marked “Disappearance of Wilhelm Peters.”
Rita read and took notes.
Wilhelm Peters’s wife reported him missing on Tuesday, August 15, 1950. They had been at the Marksmen’s Fair in Kranenburg together on Saturday, August 12. Therese Peters had left the tent early; her husband had stayed behind. Since he usually made the most of such events by staying to the end, she had thought nothing of it when he did not come home on Sunday. She assumed he had been celebrating all night. It was not until Monday morning that she went back to the tent, expecting to find her husband having a morning drink. She did not find him, and she waited out the rest of the day. Wilhelm Peters worked in the planning department; he had taken Monday off and should have been back at work on Tuesday. As far as his job was concerned, he was reliable. On August 15, 1950, Therese Peters went to the town hall first thing in the morning and asked after her husband in the planning department. When she found out that he had not arrived at work, she reported him missing.
In the days that followed, the police established that Wilhelm Peters had not been seen since the Saturday night, and that some patrons had observed a heated altercation between him and his wife in front of the marquee. There were further reports that Wilhelm Peters had taken his leave, somewhat inebriated, after midnight. Soon it was being said that he was probably no longer alive, and Therese Peters came under suspicion.
Rita Albers looked up as a policeman brought her a cup of coffee.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, smiling at him. “Tell me.” Rita cleared her throat. “Your colleague in Kranenburg . . . Is he always like that?”
The man grinned broadly and nodded. “You mean Karl van den Boom? He’s all right. He never loses his cool, and under the worst kind of stress he restores calm. He always says, ‘If people would just do everything at half the speed, only half as much would happen.’ We always send Karl out to domestics. As far as we’re concerned, de-escalation has a name: Karl. And he has his own particular sense of humor.”
“I’ll say,” Rita growled.
She leafed through the thin paper of the files, which rustled beneath her fingers, and found the record of the interview. Some of the typed characters seemed to have embedded themselves in the almost transparent pages over the years; they were pale and barely legible. The carbon paper had left halos around the lowercase n’s and r’s, and they lay scattered across the pages like small planets.
She pointed at the signature. “The reports are all signed by Sergeant Theo Gerhard. Is he still around?”
The man shrugged. “Certainly not in the police force, but he may still be alive. You’d best ask Karl.” Rita groaned quietly to herself.
An hour later, having read the files, she snapped them shut. Therese Peters had remained the prime suspect to the end. She had been interviewed several times but had stuck to her story. There had been neither a body nor sufficient evidence.
Toward the end of the file were two handwritten notes.
Dec. 28, 1950
Frau Therese Peters did not comply with the summons of Dec. 21 of this year. Today, her home was found to have been abandoned. There were no personal items or clothing to be found. Her current place of residence is unknown.
Police Sergeant T. Gerhard
Feb. 15, 1951
Efforts to establish the whereabouts of Therese Peters have been unsuccessful. Since the circumstantial evidence against her in the case of the missing Wilhelm Peters has not been corroborated, we are abandoning the police search.
Police Sergeant T. Gerhard
Chapter 8
April 21, 1998
Therese Mende stared out at the moonless night, and the images rose up of their own accord from the blackness of the water.
At first she resisted, closing her eyes and trying to evade them. But random memories continued to dance, unchecked, beneath her eyelids. A keen, stabbing pain ran through her body, as fine as silk thread and cutting. She knew it, and she had felt it, along with a pounding heart, after her telephone conversation with Hanna. The period she had forgotten was breaking powerfully over her, crushing her with the weight of old images. In the distance, the orange lights of a containership proceeded slowly across the calm water, the only sign that time was not at a standstill, even now. So peaceful. So detached.
July 1939
For years, the six of them had been riding their bicycles the almost eight miles to school in Kleve together. The boys rode to Freiherr von Stein High School, the girls to the girls’ secondary school.
Alwine, from the Kalder estate, had red curls and a loud, irreverent laugh, which she would let out over the schoolyard like a fanfare, and for which she was regularly entered in the discipline book.
Her older brother, Jacob, tall and thoughtful, carried himself with quiet pride. With his objective and self-critical manner, he even enjoyed the respect of the teachers.
Wilhelm, son of Peters, the pharmacist, faced all practical problems sturdily and energetically. He had risen to the rank of cadre unit leader in the Hitler Youth and worked hard at the difficult balancing act of overlooking his friends’ critical remarks.
Hanna, the daughter of the Höver farm, had large ocean-blue eyes that looked out earnestly from above rosy cheeks. Hanna found book learning difficult and, at the age of fourteen, bore the responsibility for the household and her brothers and sisters after her mother’s death.
Leonard, son of Kramer, the lawyer, was fine-boned and pale. He would pedal alongside Jacob and, when the wind was against them, put his hand on Jacob’s back and push him. Leonard, the literature lover, could recite whole passages from Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther by heart.
And Therese, daughter of Pohl, the doctor, was seemingly in perpetual motion born of restless vivacity. Even in the classroom, when she was sitting quietly over her books, it was as if she wanted to reach out and grab the words and figures with her hands.
Their time together was due to end that summer of 1939. The boys had done their school-leaving exams, and the word war had established itself at every table in the community. In some houses it was whispered fearfully; in others it was spoken loudly and confidently.
Jacob and Leonard were to start their compulsory Reich Labor Service in a few weeks. After that they wanted to apply for officer training. In Jacob’s case, this was a family tradition. His father, a colonel in the reserves, had already enlisted. Leonard had signed up against his parents’ wishes. They feared for his health and had intended him to study law. Wilhelm would remain in Kranenburg and begin his training in the administration. SS Captain August Hollmann had said, “We can use you here, Peters. You’ll soon make your mark.”
Because of her poor grades, Alwine had to go to boarding school. “Alwine takes everything too lightly,” the teacher had told her parents. “It’s high time she grew up.” Hanna left school that year, without a diploma, because both her older brothers had been conscripted and the work on the farm would never get done otherwise.
It was a Friday in August 1939. Wilhelm, responsible for the allocation of harvest duties within the Hitler Youth, had ensured that all six of them would be haymaking on the Kalder estate. They spent the whole day turning the hay in various fields. They laughed and joked, and the atmosphere grew more and more relaxed as midday approached. They exchanged playful remarks, and then the first hay began to fly. Competitions arose. Who would be the first to fini
sh a row? The girls lost. Alwine sulked, complaining vociferously. Couples formed up, then switched. The day flew by. When they had finished, they did not want to return to the farmhouse just yet. Nobody said it, but there was silent agreement. They all knew this was the last time the group would be together in such relaxed circumstances. They sat in the field, talking and laughing boisterously. Glances were exchanged, eyes lowered in embarrassment, gestures interpreted. Hanna was in love with Jacob; it was an open secret. Alwine liked Wilhelm, and Wilhelm was attracted to Therese. There was a competitive edge to their banter, and when words flagged, guilty smiles hovered over the field of stubble, and the setting sun tinged the evening and their cheeks with red.
Wilhelm and Leonard talked enthusiastically about Germany’s great future. Therese said, “Father thinks Hitler is rushing Germany toward disaster.”
Birds were twittering in the forest; a dog barked on a distant farm. Jacob glanced at her briefly, and she thought she caught an almost imperceptible nod of his head. Wilhelm laughed. “God, Therese, your father was in the Center Party. He has to say that. But he’s blind. With all due regard for friendship, he’s been reported several times already, for things he’s said. I think he should be a little more careful.”
“But,” she insisted, knowing herself to be safe among friends, “Father says Hitler is a warmonger.”
Alwine looked at her with her large, imploring eyes. “Oh, Therese, do we really have to spoil this lovely day with something like that?”
Leonard jumped up. “Let’s forget about politics. Today might be the last time we’re all together, and I was going to suggest that we promise, here and now, never to lose sight of one another, and always to be there for the others, as we have been for the last few years.”
It was not a solemn moment. They laughed with relief and the release of tension, and loudly sealed the promise.
The cheerfulness of the day had been like a finely spun thread. The arguments at dusk had almost snapped it. But they still managed the balancing act. They still knew how to place their friendship at the center of things and cling to it.
Therese Mende tried to call up a memory of the sky, of what it was like in those days. Had it really been as infinitely high as she now thought? So high that the naive optimism of six young people had found space beneath it? And a few weeks later, as she well knew, the sky had been a different one. When they said good-bye to Jacob and Leonard at the station early one morning, and the word war stood up from the tables and went on the march, the sky hung low and was like the inside of an oyster shell. In with the silver and steel gray, there shimmered antique rose and violet.
Chapter 9
April 21, 1998
In the afternoon, Rita Albers had tried to reach Robert Lubisch on his cell phone and, after the fifth unsuccessful attempt, left him a message on his voice mail. To distract herself, she went out into the vegetable garden and watered the rows of seeds and new growth. She carried the green watering can back and forth to the cellar door to fill it, and each round trip made her decision firmer. Once all the rows had been watered, she called Schoofs, the landscape gardeners, and requested a quote for a well.
After a cup of coffee in the kitchen, with her notes and the various photocopies spread out in front of her, she considered her next steps. She definitely had to get busy with the municipal archives. And she would talk to that Karl van den Boom again and find out about Sergeant Gerhard (retired). She should visit Heuer and perhaps . . . Pohl? The woman would have had to identify herself somewhere, to get work or lodging. Perhaps she had used her maiden name. She dialed the number of her journalist friend Köbler, who had a good track record of finding people. The word was that he had good contacts in the Land and federal police. They chatted about old times, and then she gave him an outline of the salient facts. Köbler promised to try. “Don’t expect too much, Rita,” he said at the end. “Much of the data from that time hasn’t been digitized yet. If you’re unlucky, the reports you’re after are lying in some archive somewhere. You don’t even have a location, and what if she’s gone abroad?”
Rita shared his reservations. “But you’ll try, won’t you?” she pressed him.
Robert Lubisch did not call back until late that evening, when she was sitting at her computer, writing up the results of her research so far.
Rita told him what she had found out and heard his yesses and uh-huhs getting quieter and quieter, then finally disappearing altogether.
“Are you still there?” she asked when she had finished and she could not even hear him breathing.
“Yes,” he said, and there was amazement in his voice, as if he did not believe his own yes.
Then she heard him ask quietly, “You mean, you think the man was still alive when my father took the papers?”
Rita considered this. She had not thought about it, but it was of course a possibility.
“Yes, that could be. It could also be that your father had something to do with Wilhelm Peters’s disappearance.”
“You must be mad!” Robert Lubisch exclaimed vehemently, and Rita thought she could sense his fear down the telephone line.
Then he collected himself and went on more calmly. “Frau Albers, that is a completely absurd suspicion. I consider it conceivable that my father didn’t know the man was still alive, but . . .”
She heard him take a deep breath. “Listen, I don’t want you to carry on with this. It was a stupid idea, and it’s now clear that Frau Peters obviously began a new life. I’d ask you not to pursue the matter any further.”
Rita smiled to herself. “Herr Lubisch,” she answered coolly, “I’m interested in this story, and I’m not employed by you. I’m going to go on looking for Therese Peters. I’m an inquisitive person and, above all, I’m a journalist. A story might yet emerge from this, a story I can sell.”
There was a pause. Then she heard a tight, “That’s not fair, Frau Albers.” He breathed hard several times before going on. “Please, let’s talk about this. I’ll be here in Nimwegen until tomorrow evening. I could drop by your house afterward.”
She ignored his comment. “You know, I did a bit of digging on the Internet yesterday evening. Your late father, was he Friedhelm Lubisch, the building contractor from Essen?”
The call was abruptly cut off from the other end.
Rita looked at the telephone in astonishment. Then she reread the summary of her research. It was still quite meager. She added Friedhelm Lubisch, with a question mark.
“Not fair,” Robert Lubisch had said, but what had he been expecting? Did he really think she would just go out and collect information on his behalf, out of the goodness of her heart? Besides, she had told him yesterday afternoon, in the kitchen, that the case interested her. She added her notes to the other files in the folder. He would calm down soon.
Chapter 10
April 21, 1998
Robert Lubisch sat in the hotel lobby, discussing the day’s presentations with his colleagues, in English. Normally he had no difficulty following such conversations, but today he kept losing the thread, and on two occasions he even had to ask people to repeat questions addressed to him.
The telephone conversation with Rita Albers worried him more than he cared to admit, but at the same time he cursed himself for being an idiot. What had he been thinking when he left the copies with her?
Now it was definite: he could follow the conversation no longer. He made his excuses, went over to the bar, and ordered espresso and cognac.
It had been pure folly. All his curiosity about this Therese Peters was silly sentimentality, which he could no longer explain to himself. He had uncritically considered it a happy coincidence that he had come across a journalist, and now she could no longer be stopped. He felt like a traitor. What else would this woman bring to light? He took a sip of his cognac.
The idea that his father might have had something to do with
this Wilhelm Peters’s disappearance was absurd. He had been a prisoner of war until 1948; afterward, he had scraped a living as a laborer in the Ruhr. Besides, how could Peters have moved freely in the area, five years after the war, equipped only with an SS card and a safe-conduct pass?
No, the only thing his father could perhaps be reproached for was that he had not known Peters was still alive when he took his papers. Perhaps he had even known, but had taken them anyway.
The thought left him feeling faint. He sat down on a bar stool and drank his espresso. How matter-of-factly he thought this. How matter-of-factly he thought it possible of him.
He felt the heat of shame rising in him. What did he really know about his father?
He could list the facts, the things one put in a résumé. But he had never been close to Friedhelm Lubisch, the man.
When Robert was of kindergarten age, his father had been the hardworking man who would stroke his cheek with a callused hand that smelled of sweat and cement dust. He would take him to the bar after church on Sundays, where he would drink beer with other men in ill-fitting suits, argue, buy his son a lemonade.
When Robert started school, his father was busy setting up his own business. They would sit together at the breakfast table in the cramped kitchen every morning, and while his father drank coffee and smoked, he would ask about his grades, urge him to study hard, and look anxiously at his mother when he felt, again, that his son was not eating enough. On Sundays they would go to church together, and when the weather was fine, they would go for walks in the afternoon. His mother was wearing a camel-hair coat by then, and his father a wide-brimmed hat, which he would raise briefly when other walkers came toward them.
Just before he went to high school, they moved out of the small apartment in the center of Essen and into the villa on the edge of the city, and in that big house, it seemed to him today, they got lost. The big dining-room table alone, at which each person got a breakfast tray of his own because it would have been impossible to reach the butter without standing up, suddenly appeared to him, here in the hotel bar, symbolic.
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