Otto smiled in the darkness.
‘I hope you will always try to help her if you can, Silks,’ he said. ‘If only for my sake.’
‘Otto,’ Silke said. ‘We’re all in the Saturday Club. We made a vow.’
After that there was nothing more to say and they went to sleep.
Or at least Otto did, almost immediately, dead beat from the ride. Silke lay awake for quite some time though. Listening to Otto breathe and watching his face in the moonlight.
Blood Family
THE FOLLOWING MORNING they rose with the sun.
Silke took a towel from her bag and a little galvanized tin box with soap in it.
‘I’ll just go and have a wash and stuff,’ she said.
‘Wow. Soap. You never bothered with that when we slept out as kids.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not a kid any more, am I?’ Silke replied, not looking Otto in the eye.
‘I didn’t think to bring any myself,’ Otto admitted.
‘God! Boys!’ Silke said with mock exasperation. ‘Well, you can borrow mine… I mean after.’
‘Yeah. Of course. That’s right. You go first. I’ll wait and go next.’
They smiled at each other. In the past they would have simply gone together. Free and unselfconscious. But now they both understood that the time of innocent intimacy had passed.
‘Back in a minute,’ Silke said.
‘No rush.’
‘I’ve got a little garden trowel and a roll of lavatory paper in my bag, too, if you want to use them.’
‘You’re a good camper, Silks. I didn’t bring anything.’
‘Ah they train us well in the BDM, you know. The Fuhrer watches over us even when we’re squatting in a bush!’
‘Always thought he looked like a pervert.’
After their ablutions and a drink of stream water to wash down the remains of the bread and cheese, they mounted their bikes once more.
‘Ouch!’ Silke said.
‘Me too,’ Otto agreed, ‘but only twenty-five K to go.’
‘Yeah. And then all the way back.’
The hamlet that was their destination was scarcely large enough to even make it on to the map. It was reached by a deeply rutted, hard-to-cycle, unmetalled lane which ran through some small outlying farms and ended up amongst a little group of poor cottages clustered around an algae-covered duck pond.
There was a small wooden chapel and beside that a village pub of sorts which was really just the front parlour of one of the cottages with an old tin Bitburger beer sign hanging outside. This also doubled as a post office and tiny general store, offering a few tinned goods and some grey-looking chocolate. It was here that Otto enquired after the people he was looking for. Herr and Frau Hahn. His maternal grandparents by birth.
He had half feared that in the intervening fifteen years they might have moved on from the village where they had lived when their daughter died, but like most peasants of their generation and of all the many generations that had preceded them, Herr and Frau Hahn were born, lived and would no doubt die in the same few square kilometres of land. Their only trip to Berlin had in fact been for their daughter’s confinement when they had hoped to bring her back and get her wed to a decent farm boy who would accept her bastard child.
That plan of course had never happened and the Hahns’ daughter had never come home. But now her child had and he was standing in their little parlour.
‘You are a fine-looking boy,’ the man said, the deep lines of his weather-beaten old face creasing between tears and a smile.
The old woman was openly crying, dabbing at her eyes with an ancient, yellowing lace handkerchief.
‘Are you truly our Inge’s son?’ she asked.
‘Of course he is,’ the man said, ‘look at him, can’t you see her in him? Can’t you see her now? Standing here in her home as if she’d never left. He has her beautiful eyes.’
The old couple were clearly almost overcome and Otto shifted uneasily. Embarrassed to be the focus of such unbridled emotion from two people who were strangers to him and whom he intended should remain strangers.
‘He is! He’s Inge’s boy!’ the woman said.
‘Please, Frau Hahn…’ Otto began, but before he could finish the stooped little woman had scurried across the room to a dresser on which were arranged their few family treasures. One or two pieces of ornamental china, a music box and some framed family photos.
‘Come see,’ the old lady said, picking up various photographs. ‘Here is your dear mother.’
Otto did not move to join Frau Hahn and view the photo. He was looking at a different picture, hanging on the wall above the display in pride of place, framed by a garland of dried flowers. A picture of Hitler.
‘You are Nazis?’ Otto asked.
Herr Hahn turned to Silke, who was sitting on the only cushioned chair, which the old couple had insisted she occupy, nodding at her BDM uniform.
‘We all serve the Fuhrer,’ he said with a little bow. ‘Just like your charming young friend.’
‘Our Fuhrer was sent to Germany by providence,’ his wife added with an evangelical smile. ‘He watches over us and makes all well.’
Otto was silent, his lip quivering slightly.
‘Never mind that, Otts,’ Silke said quickly. ‘Everyone has that portrait on their wall. Forget about the Fuhrer, come on! Take a look at the photo of your mum!’
Otto turned to Silke. ‘You know who my mum is, Silke, and she’s not in that photo.’
‘Yes of course, Otto, I know that, but all the same you should look.’
Otto stepped forward and looked at the faded photograph of an attractive sandy-haired girl.
‘It was taken in 1919,’ the old farmer said with a touch of bitterness, ‘the year before she met…’
‘My father?’ Otto said sharply, finishing the sentence that the old man had been reluctant to complete.
‘He was a Communist!’ the farmer said, still clearly very angry after sixteen years. ‘He got her with child and then deserted her.’
‘He was murdered,’ Otto corrected. ‘My parents told me. He died in the massacre at Lichtenburg. Murdered by the
The old couple looked confused.
‘Please don’t call me Herr Hahn, my boy,’ the sad-looking peasant begged. ‘I am your grandfather.’
Otto bit his lip.
‘I’ve come to ask you about my family,’ he said. ‘I want to know if there is any Jewish blood in our line.’
The old couple looked shocked for a moment and then smiled. They of course completely misunderstood the purpose behind Otto’s question.
‘Oh you poor boy,’ Frau Hahn exclaimed. ‘Of course, as an adopted child you must be worried about your blood for fear that it isn’t pure.’
‘That some Jew crept over the back fence!’ the farmer grunted.
‘Of course! Of course, my child,’ the woman said, ‘you must be reassured. But look!’
Frau Hahn reached up to the single shelf that hung bracketed to the wall and on which stood just two books. An ancient family Bible and a copy of
