For the first time I was allowed to visit him in his cell. Apparently Konrad Pokriefke had won this onetime special privilege as a reward for good behavior and exemplary social conduct. His fellow inmates were outdoors, I heard, working in the gardens. Konny was waiting for me in the corner he called his own.
It was an old dump, this facility, but word had it that a modern replacement was in the works. On the one hand I thought I was immune to surprises by now, on the other I was afraid of my son's sudden inspirations.
As I entered and at first saw only stained walls, he was sitting in his Norwegian sweater at a table shoved against the wall, and said, without looking up, “Well, Dad?”
With a casual gesture. My son, who had caught me unawares with his “Dad,” indicated the bookshelf, where all the framed photos were gone, removed from the wall — those of David as Wolfgang, Frankfurter young and old, the two purported images of the U-boat commander Marinesko. Nothing new had taken their place. I ran a quick eye over the spines of the books on the shelf: what one might expect — a lot of history, some works on the new technologies, in their midst two volumes of Kafka.
I did not comment on the vanished photos. And he didn't seem to have expected any comment. What happened next went quickly. Konrad stood up, lifted from its wire rack in the middle of the table the model of the ship named for Wilhelm Gustloff and marked with three red dots. He leaned the ship against the rack as if it were listing, and then began, not in haste or in anger, but rather with premediated deliberateness, to smash with his bare fist his carefully pieced-together creation.
That must have hurt. After four or five blows, the side of his right fist began to bleed. He had probably cut himself on the funnel, the lifeboats, the two masts. But he kept going. When the hull refused to give way beneath his blows, he picked up the wreck in both hands, swung it to one side, raised it to eye level, and then let it fall to the floor, which was made of oiled planks. He then trampled what was left of the model
“Satisfied now, Dad?” After that, not a word. His gaze went to the barred window, and remained fixed on it. I babbled something, I no longer recall what. Something positive. “Never give up,” or, “Let's make a fresh start together,” or some such rubbish from American movies: “I'm proud of you, son.” When I left, my son had nothing more to say.
A few days later, no, the next day, someone — the same someone in whose name I have been doing this crabwalk and making some progress — urged me to go online. He said the mouse might lead me to a suitable conclusion. Until then I'd practiced restraint: only what I needed professionally, occasional porno, that was it. Since Konny had been locked up, the ether was silent. And David was gone, of course.
I had to surf for a long time. The name of the accursed ship appeared on the screen numerous times, but nothing new, nothing final and conclusive. Then it turned out to be worse than I had feared. At the URL www.kameradschaft-konrad-pokriefke.de, a Web site introduced itself in German and English, campaigning for someone whose conduct and thinking it held up as exemplary, someone whom the hated system had for that very reason locked up. “We believe in you, we will wait for you, we will follow you…” And so on and so forth.
It doesn't end. Never will it end.
