seconds.
“I’m sorry he had to see the body.”
“He’s a brave boy. He held your hand the whole time I was working, and I can assure you it wasn’t pretty. I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”
Paul shook his head, trying to clear it. “You’ll have to go out and buy some sulfonamide. What time is it?”
“Seven a.m.”
“Let’s rest for a bit. Tonight we’ll go and get your sister.”
“Where is she?”
“Dachau camp.”
Manfred opened his eyes wide and swallowed.
“You know what Dachau is, Paul?”
“It’s one of those camps the Nazis built to house their political enemies. Basically an open-air prison.”
“You’ve just returned to these shores, and it shows,” said Manfred, shaking his head. “Officially, these places are wonderful summer camps for unruly or undisciplined children. But if you believe the few decent journalists who are still around, places like Dachau are a living hell.” Manfred went on to describe the horrors going on just a few miles outside the city limits. A few months earlier he’d come across a couple of magazines that described Dachau as a low-level correctional facility where the inmates were well fed, were dressed in crisp white uniforms, and smiled for the cameras. The pictures were staged for the international press. Reality was very different. Dachau was a prison of swift justice for those who opposed the Nazis-parodies of actual trials that rarely lasted more than an hour. It was a hard-labor camp where watchdogs prowled the perimeter of the electric fences, howling into the night under the constant glare of searchlights from above.
“It’s impossible to get any information on the prisoners jailed there. And nobody ever escapes, you can be sure of that,” Manfred said.
“Alys won’t have to escape.”
Paul outlined a rough plan. Just a dozen phrases, but enough so that by the end of the explanation Manfred was even more worried than before.
“There are a million things that could go wrong.”
“But it could also work.”
“And the moon could be green when it rises tonight.”
“Look, are you going to help me save your sister or not?’”
Manfred looked at Julian, who had climbed back up onto the cart and was kicking his ball against its sides.
“I suppose so,” he said with a sigh.
“Then go and rest for a while. When you wake up, you’re going to help me kill Paul Reiner.”
When he saw Manfred and Julian sprawled on the ground, trying to rest, Paul realized just how exhausted he was. However, there was still one thing left for him to do before he could get some sleep.
At the other end of the stables, his mother’s letter was still attached to the nail.
Again Paul had to step over Jurgen’s body, but this time it was much more of an ordeal. He spent several minutes looking at his brother: his missing eye, the increasing paleness of his skin as the blood accumulated in his lower parts, the symmetry of his body, felled by the knife that had cut into his abdomen. In spite of the fact that this person had caused him nothing but suffering, he couldn’t help feeling a profound sorrow.
Things should have been different, he thought, finally daring to step through the wall of air that seemed to solidify above the body.
With the utmost care he pulled the letter from the nail.
He was tired but, all the same, the emotion he felt when he opened the letter was almost overwhelming.
57
My dear son:
There isn’t a right way to begin this letter. The truth is, this is only one of several attempts I’ve made over the last four or five months. After a while-an interval that gets shorter each time-I have to pick up my pencil and try to write it all over again. I always hope you aren’t in the boardinghouse when I burn the previous version and scatter the ashes out the window. Then I set to the task, this poor substitute for what I need to do, which is to tell you the truth.
Your father. When you were small you used to ask me about him. I would brush you off with vague answers, or kept my mouth shut, because I was afraid. In those days our lives depended on the charity of the Schroeders, and I was too weak to look for an alternative. If only I’d
… But no, ignore me. My life is full of “only’s” and I grew tired of feeling regret a long time ago.
It’s also been a long time since you stopped asking me about your father. In a way this has worried me even more than your tireless interest in him when you were small, because I know how obsessed with him you still are. I know how hard you find it to sleep at nights, and I know that the thing you want most is to know what happened.
Which is why I have to remain silent. My mind does not work all that well, and occasionally I lose track of time, or the sense of where I am, and I only hope that in those moments of confusion I don’t give away the location of this letter. The rest of the time, when I’m lucid, all I feel is fear-fear that the day you learn the truth you will rush to confront those responsible for Hans’s death.
Yes, Paul, your father didn’t die in a shipwreck as we told you, something you guessed not long before we were thrown out of the baron’s home. That would have been an apt death for him, all the same.
Hans Reiner was born in Hamburg in 1876, though his family moved to Munich when he was still a boy. He ended up loving both cities, but the sea was his only real passion.
He was an ambitious man. He wanted to be a captain, and he succeeded. He was already a captain when we met at a dance around the turn of this century. I don’t remember the date exactly, I think it was late 1902, but I can’t be sure. He asked me to dance, and I said yes. It was a waltz. By the time the music had finished, I was hopelessly in love with him.
He courted me between sea voyages and ended up making Munich his permanent home just to please me, however inconvenient this was for him professionally. The day he walked into my parents’ house to ask your grandfather for my hand was the happiest day of my life. My father was a big, genial man, but that day he was very solemn and even shed a tear. It’s sad that you never had the chance to meet him; you would have liked him very much.
My father said we would have a party to celebrate, a big engagement party in the traditional style. A whole weekend, with dozens of guests and a fine banquet.
Our little home wasn’t suitable, so my father asked my sister’s permission to hold the event at the baron’s country house in Herrsching am Ammersee. In those days your uncle’s enthusiasm for gambling was still under control, and he had several properties scattered across Bavaria. Brunhilda agreed, more in order to stay on good terms with my mother than for any other reason.
When we were little, my sister and I were never that close. She was more interested in boys, dances, and fancy outfits than I was. I preferred to stay at home with my parents. I was still playing with dolls when Brunhilda went on her first date.
She’s not a bad person, Paul. She never was: only selfish and spoiled. When she married the baron, a couple of years before I met your father, she was the happiest woman in the world. What made her change? I don’t know. Boredom, perhaps, or your uncle’s infidelity. He was a self-confessed womanizer, something she had never noticed before, having been dazzled by his money and his title. Later, however, it became too obvious for her not to notice. She had a son with him, which I had never expected. Eduard was a sweet-natured, solitary child who grew up in the care of maids and wet nurses. His mother never paid him much attention because the boy had not served his purpose: to keep the baron on a short leash and away from his tarts.
