Silence

by Mechtild Borrmann

  Hanna, screaming inside her head, “If Father finds out, he’ll kill me.”

  Leonard, who had chosen to die rather than betray Jacob.

  And now this lie.

  It took her several minutes to understand that both Alwine and her mother also knew, or at least suspected, whom Leonard had been protecting.

  She shook her head in disbelief, wanting to say, We can’t do this, but Alwine beat her to it. She said, “Don’t you understand? Jacob will do something stupid. You know what he’s like, after all. They’ll arrest him. He might do himself in too. Is that what you want?”

  Therese Mende got up from the sofa. The pain in the left side of her chest had gotten worse. She went over to the sideboard, poured herself a glass of water, and took one of her heart pills. The light went on out on the terrace. Luisa had come out of the kitchen and was gathering together the cushions that had been swept off the chairs by the wind.

  First the silence, then the lies. The one resulted, as a matter of course, from the other. Always.

  Even at home, the tone had changed. Her mother now went to church twice a day, silently distancing herself from her husband and daughter. She could not bear the remoteness of the cottage, and she tolerated their modest circumstances with difficulty. “God’s punishment,” she would say, kneeling at the pew for hours and begging for forgiveness. Sometimes she would say, “God’s will,” and her father would leave the house in a rage.

  Preparations for the invasion of Russia were in full swing, and Jacob’s home leave was reduced from a week to two days. He visited her only once, for an evening walk. They went out among the fields and meadows, and the rich green, dotted with the yellow of dandelions, seemed to give the lie to that winter’s events. She was distracted, fearful of his questions. He was thin; his face bore dark shadows. As if of their own accord, their steps led toward the cemetery, and she knew she would be unable to lie to him in front of Leonard’s grave. He said, “If I ask you what happened, will you at least tell me the truth?” There it was again, this word, its single syllable ringing out so pure and so far.

  She nodded. But he did not ask. He pushed aside the branches of the hedge behind the plain wooden cross and said, “Leo’s father wrote to me.” On the way back, he said, “I’ve volunteered for the Eastern Front.” She did not ask why. She did not want to hear his answer. In the yard of the Höver cottage, he said good-bye and asked, “Do you know who denounced him?” She avoided his eyes. He raised his head and looked over at the Höver farm. “Why only him? Why not me?” he whispered.

  Because she loves you, she wanted to say. Because she thought it was Leonard who stood in the way of her love. But she said nothing. Once again she saw Hanna that evening in the barn, heard her talk about truth too. As Therese and Leonard parted, he took her in his arms. “Take care of yourself,” he whispered in her ear. Not “See you soon,” not “Good-bye,” and she did not want to hear the decision behind his “Take care of yourself.”

  Then he left.

  Even today she could see him going. His head bowed, his arms dangling so helplessly from his shoulders. He did not turn around once.

  The news came soon, in September. Frau Kalder’s mouth quivered between grief and pride as the telegram was handed to her. “Fallen for the Führer, the people, and the fatherland,” and the innocuousness of the word fallen took root in her mind. Over and over again, she saw him walking along the path, saw him fall and get up, fall and get up, fall.

  Years later, she decided it was this telegram that rendered his death pointless.

  When Hanna found out, she screamed like an animal in its death throes. Old Höver called for Dr. Pohl because she kept beating her head against the stable wall and he feared for her sanity.

  Chapter 25

  April 23/24, 1998

  When he arrived at the police station in Kranenburg, the Long One dialed the Düsseldorf telephone number. He reached the editorial offices of a newspaper, and a young woman informed him that Thomas Köbler was on their staff, but he had left the building half an hour before. Van den Boom entered the name in his computer, but the man was probably an upstanding citizen because there were no results in the police database. They waited two hours, during which Van den Boom’s young Homicide colleague paced up and down in front of his desk like a caged animal, cursing to himself. All this left Van den Boom, who had taken off his jacket and clasped his fingers over his belly, unmoved. Tomorrow was Friday, his day off. So he would be able to ask around undisturbed. First he would visit this Gerhard, and then he would go to the municipal archives. Frau Jäckel had told him she directed the Albers woman there. He would have loved to ask Brand what he knew about this Dr. Lubisch, but he would do better to call Homicide in the morning and talk to someone who was less furious with him.

  After another hour—Thomas Köbler was still not at the newspaper, and it was past one o’clock in the morning—the Long One told Van den Boom angrily that he had interfered far more than he should, called him a provincial flatfoot, and left the police station, slamming the door shut with a bang.

  Van den Boom leaned over his desk, pulled out his notebook, wrote Thomas Köbler, Gerhard, and municipal archives. Then he too gave up waiting, put on his jacket, switched off the light, and walked out to the parking lot. The night had cooled down by now, and he stood still for a moment, breathing in the clear air and enjoying the quiet. He set off at a stroll. His home, which he shared with his cats, Lili and Marlene, was only a few minutes’ walk away.

  He had put a good fifty yards behind him, when a car turned into the narrow street and raced past him. He recognized the Düsseldorf plates immediately, and ran back toward it. Thomas Köbler was about to get back in by the time he reached the parking lot.

  “Herr Köbler?” he called out breathlessly.

  The man looked young, and Van den Boom was not sure whether he actually was, or whether his shoulder-length hair and denim jacket just made him look it.

  Köbler apologized for being late. An accident on the A57 had held him up for an hour.

  Van den Boom unlocked the door and offered him coffee. He looked markedly older in the neon light.

  Köbler accepted, thanking him, and looked at his interlocutor. “Was it you I talked to earlier on the phone?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Me and my colleague,” he said, nodding, as he got the coffee machine going.

  Thomas Köbler did not seem interested in the question anymore. “So,” he said, getting right to the point, “what happened with Rita?”

  Van den Boom looked at him carefully. “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s begin at the beginning.”

  The man sat in the chair for barely two minutes, then leapt to his feet and began pacing up and down, like the Long One. The heels of his shoes clicked on the tile floor at each step, like a timepiece’s second hand in a hurry. “I told you on the phone. I won’t tell you anything unless I get something in return.”

  Karl closed his eyes in irritation. “I can tell you one thing for sure: you’ll wear your shoes out if you go on racing about like that,” he growled. He wiped his face and heard the bristles scrape. The sound made him feel momentarily tired. “How did you know Rita Albers?”

  Köbler, who had sat down again, shrugged. “Three years ago, we worked together on a story about the murder of the then–prime minister of Bulgaria. After that, we were in touch only irregularly. I’ve obtained information for her occasionally, and vice versa.”

  “And Rita Albers asked you to obtain information about Therese Peters?”

  Köbler crossed his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t work like that,” he began, with a show of self-confidence. “I want to know a few things first.”

  Van den Boom thought briefly. “Do you know Therese Peters’s current identity?”

  Köbler remained obstinate.

  Van den Boom sighed. “Herr Köbler, if the death
of Frau Albers is connected to the Peters case and you’re stupid enough to make the same mistake as she did, then you’d better get off home as quickly as possible. I’ve been in charge here for eighteen years, and in that time there have been two drug-related deaths and one crime of passion. Go and die in Düsseldorf, please, and don’t screw up my statistics.”

  The journalist looked at him in disbelief. He asked, “How do you know one is connected to the other?”

  “I don’t know,” Karl van den Boom replied. He fetched two cups, placed them on the desk, and went on. “But I’ll show I’m willing to meet you halfway. Frau Albers was bludgeoned to death. Her laptop, and probably some files, have disappeared.”

  Köbler nodded. “Anything else?”

  Van den Boom waited. He pushed milk and sugar across the desk. “So,” he said, as if ending the conversation, “it’s late, and I’ve been off duty for hours. It’s your turn to give me some information, but if you don’t want to stick to the rules of the game, I suggest you drink up your coffee and get on your way.”

  Köbler’s forehead creased in a frown. He held his cup in both hands. Van den Boom shut down the computer and switched off the coffee machine.

  “I’ll stay,” said Köbler with emphasis. “How Rita died we’ll probably be able to read in the papers tomorrow morning. That’s not the information I wanted.”

  Van den Boom sat down again. “What information did you have in mind?”

  “Rita must have found something explosive in Therese Peters’s history, apart from her identity. And you know what.”

  Van den Boom was tired. He wrote the telephone number for Homicide on a sheet of notepaper and passed it across the desk. “Call them tomorrow morning,” he said evenly, hoping Köbler would come up against Brand. He was surly and wouldn’t let him off easily. After all, he was withholding important information for the solving of a crime.

  Chapter 26

  1942/43

  She hardly ever saw Hanna; when they did meet, they said hello briefly and avoided looking each other in the face. Her visits to the Kalder estate became less frequent. Wilhelm was there almost every day, with the obvious intention of meeting her. He was often accompanied by SA Corporal Theo Gerhard, from Münster. A man with a soft, plump body and a loud voice that seemed at odds with his physique, he made even a polite request sound like an order.

  Alwine was well aware of Wilhelm’s intentions, and Therese would leave when his car entered the yard or turn back if she saw it already there. They did not discuss Jacob’s death. Alwine wore black and had not yet rediscovered her former gaiety. She would wrinkle her nose and throw her head back in laughter, but there was something forced about her cheerfulness. Occasionally she would say, unprompted, “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.” And she would drive the doubt from her voice with a determined nod.

  Therese’s father had been working at the hospital in Bedburg-Hau since the summer. He was often away from home for days at a time.

  At night, the wailing of sirens blended with the rumble of bombers. They kept coming, flying over the lower Rhine on their way to targets in the Ruhr, where they dropped their payloads onto the big cities. The colors of the summer crept past her weary eyes and turned into fall, and in September an army truck delivered some Russian prisoners of war, labor for the fields. Four men were allocated to the Kalder estate, two to the Höver farm. As the SS squad leader in the town hall, Wilhelm was responsible for the work and for supervising the Russians. He patrolled the farms regularly, with SA Corporal Gerhard. Notices in the village warned against contact with the enemy and threatened severe penalties.

  In the early days, as Therese rode to work in Kleve first thing in the morning, she would see the Russians already at work in the fields of the Höver farm. They would watch her go by, and she would pedal faster, frightened.

  A scant few days later, on a Saturday evening, little Paul came running in. “The doctor must come. The Russian is dying.” Her father packed his bag and asked her to come with him. In a corner at the back of the barn, there was a partitioned area with two narrow cots against the clapboard wall. A kerosene lamp hung from a beam, shedding a diffuse light. The sick man lay curled up on one of the cots; the acrid smell of vomit wafted from a bucket beside him. Dr. Pohl turned the man toward him. His face was battered, and there was a gaping wound in his forehead. He pulled back the blanket. The thin body was covered with bruises.

  He spoke soothingly to the man. “Why did he do this?” he asked. The answer came from the rear of the shelter. They had not noticed the man there, leaning motionless against the clapboard wall. “He had a fever,” he said, stepping out of the shadows. Tall and thin, his face unshaven and cadaverous, his dark hair shoulder length, his clothes filthy and too big for him. He rolled the words around in his mouth, making them round and heavy. His upright posture lent him an air of pride that refused to accept the rest of his appearance.

  Therese Mende looked at her watch. It was well after midnight; Luisa had gone home long ago. The wind had let up and rain was rattling down, setting off the motion detectors on the terrace so that they lit up and illuminated everything. She stood up and watched as the water formed a reflective surface on the paving stones and was pierced, bullet-like, by each succeeding round of raindrops.

  Was that the night it happened? She no longer knew. She had wanted him to go on speaking forever, forming those words that trundled across the barn like earthen bullets. “Herr Höver says Fedir sick,” he went on carefully, “and should rest. Not work.”

  She felt ashamed, because she had thought Höver had done this to the man, and she saw her father breathe a sigh of relief too. “Herr Höver was with me in field. Peters and Gerhard came. Hanna fetched us.” He fell silent and stepped back into the shadows. She thought, Wilhelm didn’t do this. It was Gerhard.

  Her father sent her back to the house. “Hot water,” he said, “and something we can use for dressings.” Hanna was standing in the kitchen. She had boiled some water and torn a bedsheet into equal-sized strips. “What else do you need?” she asked, the harshness in her voice not matching the care she had taken. She looked up only once, briefly, clenching her teeth together to hide the quivering of her chin.

  Therese and her father both nursed Fedir, who kept whispering the name “Yuri” and reaching for his friend’s hand. Yuri. Twice she came close to him. He smelled of sour sweat, earth, autumn air.

  Her father asked where he had learned to speak such good German. He said his mother came from a family of immigrants and had taught him. She thought she saw a brief smile. He went on to say he had been an architecture student, and it sounded as if it had been in another life. “Fedir is only . . . seven-and-ten,” he explained quietly, and she was happy at this number, which sounded so strange and yet so right.

  Hanna brought a dish of cabbage soup, placed it on the wooden chest, and turned to leave.

  “Hanna.” Dr. Pohl held her back. “Where’s your father?”

  Hanna turned, hesitating. “He was going to the town hall,” she said tonelessly. She looked at Yuri and scolded him. “The cows need to go back to their meadows, and the potatoes need to be bagged up.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t do it all by myself!” she cried, and ran over to the house.

  Yuri set to work immediately. Therese fed soup to Fedir, and her father followed Hanna into the house. A few minutes later, he set off for the town hall, but old Höver met him on his way back. “Won’t happen again,” the old man said in his brusque way. “Not on my farm.”

  It was not until years later that Therese would learn why old Höver was so sure.

  Fedir had a high fever, his dressings needed changing hourly, and somebody had to make sure he got enough fluids. Therese’s father and Höver carried him along the path to the cottage in a handcart. Therese’s mother tried to stop them, wailing, “We’ll all be thrown in prison.” For the first time in her life, T
herese saw her father angrily rebuke her mother. Old Höver stood there with his cap in his hand, just like that time in their old house. “Frau Pohl,” he said respectfully, “I promise you nothing will happen. And it’s only until the lad gets over the fever.” Fedir stayed, and her mother nursed him. At first she did it reluctantly, but when she discovered a small crucifix hidden in Fedir’s hand, her reservations seemed to vanish.

  Wilhelm came to check the Höver farm from time to time, but now he came without Gerhard. He would ask Hanna or old Höver if everything was all right, then drive away. He did not enter the partitioned area in the barn.

  Yuri visited Fedir every evening, and Therese rode home quickly after work in order not to miss him. When he left, she would go outside with him. Although the nights were cold, they would stand on the path and talk for a long time. Sometimes he would search for words, and she would find and offer them to him, and he would accept them like small gifts. Once she slipped on the muddy path, and he caught her. She looked deep into his brown eyes for only a few seconds, but she felt a new and unfamiliar life stirring within her, like an airy dance.

  Fedir stayed with them for ten days. When he went back to the Höver farm, Yuri no longer had an excuse to come to the cottage, and from that day on they met at the edge of the forest and walked in the shelter of the trees, always watchful in case someone spotted them.

  Therese Mende remembered what it had been like, the first time she stroked his face. Höver had gotten him a straight razor, and Fedir had cut his hair. She had run her fingers through the thick, crudely trimmed mop of hair, and then she could not leave him alone. She caressed his cheeks, ran her hand over his forehead, traced the dark eyebrows, and stroked the thin lips. He pulled her to him. Later, she thought she had stood like that for hours. The warmth of his caressing hands penetrated the cloth of her jacket; it was like a summer’s breeze on naked skin, opening up pathways to her innermost self, and everything in her felt driven toward him. They kissed. When they let go of each other, she felt invulnerable to the chill of the evening. He whispered, “This can’t be,” and took a fearful step back. She knew it. She could see the posters in front of her, warning against contact with the enemy, but inside her there was only this unfamiliar desire, this energy, pulsing like waves, and a joy she had never known before, sweeping away all doubt.